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Case law › Supreme Court › ITO v Murlidhar Bhagwan Das — a finding is only what the year under appeal actually required
Supreme CourtHelps taxpayers.34 of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922s.34(3) of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922s.150s.150(1)s.150(2)s.149s.148s.153(3)s.283 (Act of 2025)

ITO v Murlidhar Bhagwan Das — a finding is only what the year under appeal actually required

The Commissioner (Appeals) allowed my appeal for one year and said in passing that the amount really belongs to an earlier year. The officer has now reopened that earlier year and calls the remark a finding. Is it one?

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed on 1 April 2026. It still governs income earned up to 31 March 2026, and every proceeding about those years however late — assessment, reassessment, rectification, penalty, revision and appeal alike. Income earned from 1 April 2026 is governed by the Income-tax Act, 2025. What changed, and which Act governs your year →

The Commissioner (Appeals) allowed my appeal for one year and said in passing that the amount really belongs to an earlier year. The officer has now reopened that earlier year and calls the remark a finding. Is it one?

Probably not. A Constitution Bench of five judges construed the second proviso to s.34(3) of the 1922 Act — the ancestor of s.150 — and held by three to two that it lifts the time limit only for the year that was actually before the appellate, revisional or reference authority. The majority adopted the Allahabad High Court's definition of “finding” in Pt. Hazari Lal and added that a finding can only be what was necessary for the disposal of an appeal in respect of the assessment of a particular year. A “direction” means one the authority is empowered to give under the sections named in the proviso, and s.31 gave the Appellate Assistant Commissioner no power to order an assessment for a year that was not before him. The words “any person” in the proviso were confined to a person intimately connected with the assessment of the year under appeal. The Revenue's appeal was dismissed with costs. Raghubar Dayal and Mudholkar JJ dissented.

Decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India, Constitution Bench of five — B.P. Sinha CJ, K. Subba Rao, Raghubar Dayal, N. Rajagopala Ayyangar and J.R. Mudholkar JJ. The majority judgment was delivered by Subba Rao J; Mudholkar J delivered the dissent, with which Raghubar Dayal J agreed.) on 1964-01-29, reported as Civil Appeal No. 130 of 1962, by special leave from the judgment and decree of the Allahabad High Court dated 17 March 1959 in Miscellaneous Writ Petition No. 280 of 1958; the judgment carries the citations AIR 1965 SC 342 and [1964] 6 SCR 411, and is cited in later judgments as [1964] 52 ITR 335. It bears on section 34 of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922, section 34(3) of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922, section 150, section 150(1), section 150(2), section 149, section 148, section 153(3), section 283 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Reassessment & Reopening, Assessment & Scrutiny and How Tax Law Is Read matters.

Still good law. Nothing doubting it was found, and the Supreme Court has twice restated it. In Commissioner of Income-tax, Bihar v Banwari Lal Agarwal, decided 18 January 1971 by Shah CJ, Hegde and Grover JJ, the Court said the expressions in the second proviso mean “respectively, a finding necessary for giving relief in respect of the assessment for the year in question, and a direction which the appellate or revisional authority, as the case may be is empowered to give under the sections mentioned in that proviso”. In Rajinder Nath v Commissioner of Income-tax, Delhi, decided 13 August 1979 by Pathak and Bhagwati JJ in Civil Appeals Nos. 1864-1869 of 1972, the Court carried the same construction into s.153(3)(ii) of the 1961 Act: a finding “must be a finding necessary for the disposal of the particular case, that is to say, in respect of the particular assessee and in relation to the particular assessment year”, an incidental finding is not enough, and a direction “must be an express direction necessary for the disposal of the case before the authority or court” and one “which the authority or court is empowered to give”. Rajinder Nath adds that where the officer is left an option whether or not to act, that is not a direction at all. The words survive. Section 150(1) of the 1961 Act uses the same expression, “any finding or direction contained in an order”, and the substitution of s.150 by section 11 of the Finance Act, 2026 (Act No. 4 of 2026), deemed made with effect from 1 February 2026, leaves those words untouched while splitting the sub-section into clause (a) for an authority and clause (b) for a court. One change is worth marking. Clause (b) now reaches “a court in any proceeding under this Act or any other law”, where the earlier text reached a court only in a proceeding under some other law. This decision says nothing about a court's order, because the 1922 proviso reached only orders under the named sections. The new s.150(3), which puts the department to a three-month period of its own, is a limit on the notice and does not touch what a finding is. On the boundary: the 1961 Act was repealed on 1 April 2026 by s.536(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 and continued by s.536(2) for tax years beginning before that date, so s.150 and this construction still govern those years. For later years the provision is s.283 of the 2025 Act, which carries the same expression.

Why it matters

This is the first question to ask about any notice that claims the benefit of s.150, and it is asked before limitation, before sanction and before anything else. If the passage the officer is relying on is not a finding or a direction within this decision, s.150(1) never engaged, and the notice has to stand or fall under s.149 like any other. That is a complete answer, and it is available far more often than practitioners use it, because appellate orders are full of observations about other years that nobody needed for the year being decided. The test the majority gave is a hard one for the Revenue: not whether the appellate authority said it, not whether it was deliberate, but whether the appellate authority had to decide it to dispose of the year before it. An observation that the receipt belongs to an earlier year, made while deleting an addition, usually fails that test, because the deletion stands whether or not the earlier year is named. The companion holding on “direction” closes the other door: a first appellate authority has no power to order an assessment for a year not before it, so words that read as an instruction to assess another year are outside the section whatever they say. Two guards, and each one is enough on its own.

Binding on every court and authority in India.

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Related

Other authorities on the same sections.
Every authority on the provisions this decision turns on: all 203 on s.148 · all 30 on s.149 · all 6 on s.150