Section 151 makes prior approval of a specified authority a condition for issuing a notice under section 148 or 148A. Since the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024, effective 1 September 2024, the specified authority is the Additional Commissioner, Additional Director, Joint Commissioner or Joint Director. Courts have struck down approvals that merely rubber-stamp the officer's proposal, but a retrospective provision inserted by the Finance Act 2026 now deems such approvals administrative and supervisory and protects them from challenge on the ground of insufficient reasons.
Reopening is not left to the Assessing Officer alone. Section 148 says no notice shall be issued unless the officer has obtained the prior approval of the specified authority, and section 151 names that authority. As substituted by Act No. 15 of 2024 with effect from 1 September 2024, the specified authority for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A is the Additional Commissioner or Additional Director or Joint Commissioner or Joint Director. That is a single tier.
The earlier framework, under the Finance Act 2021 regime, was graded by elapsed time: within three years from the end of the relevant assessment year, the Principal Commissioner, Principal Director, Commissioner or Director; beyond three years, the Principal Chief Commissioner, Principal Director General, Chief Commissioner or Director General. For any reopening initiated in that window, the correct rank matters, because approval by the wrong authority is not approval at all.
On what the approval must contain, the line of authority has been that sanction is a safeguard and not a formality. The Delhi High Court in Capital Broadways Pvt. Ltd. v. ITO held that mere repetition of the words of the statute, mere rubber stamping, or the mere use of the expression "Yes, I am satisfied" cannot be a valid approval; the sanctioning authority must show independent application of mind. It followed CIT v. S. Goyanka Lime & Chemicals, where mechanical recording of satisfaction was held unsustainable, and Yum! Restaurants Asia, which treated section 151 as a supervisory check on the power to reopen. The court distinguished Meenakshi Overseas, where the same words sufficed because the record showed the reasons had in fact been considered.
So the practical test was never the wording alone. It was whether the record shows the approving authority saw the reasons, engaged with them, and formed his own view — for example by a note, a query, or a reference to the specific material.
That position has now been curtailed. Section 292BC, inserted by the Finance Act 2026 (Act No. 4 of 2026) with retrospective effect from 1 April 2021, provides that notwithstanding anything in the Act or in any judgment, order or decree of any court, any approval given by an income-tax authority in relation to assessment, reassessment or recomputation proceedings is deemed to be administrative and supervisory in nature, and shall not be invalid by reason of any insufficiency of the reasons recorded, or by reason of any defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication, including whether a digital signature was appended where the approval was granted electronically. The Income-tax Act, 2025 carries the equivalent in section 522.
What remains after that is the harder core of the objection. Section 292BC addresses insufficiency of reasons and defects in form and authentication. It does not, on its face, supply an approval that was never obtained, nor cure approval by an authority other than the one section 151 specifies, nor extend to a case where the approval relates to a different assessment year or a different proposal. Those go to whether the statutory condition was satisfied at all, not to the adequacy of the reasons recorded.
The practical consequence is that the winning form of the argument has narrowed. "The approval was mechanical" is now largely answered by section 292BC. "There was no approval", "the approval was given by the wrong rank", or "the approval was given after the notice issued" are not.
Sanction is one of the few reopening objections that can be verified from documents rather than argued from inference, so it belongs in every reply as a request for the approval record. Since the Finance Act 2026 amendment, framing the point as "the reasons in the approval were inadequate" will usually fail; framing it as absence of approval, wrong authority, or approval after the event does not. Identifying the correct specified authority also depends on when the reopening was initiated, because the tier changed on 1 September 2024.
The only thing behind my reopening notice is the Valuation Officer's report. Is that enough?
My return was only processed under 143(1). Does that stop the department reopening it later?
The order under section 148A(d) rejects everything I said and the section 148 notice has followed. Can I take it straight to the High Court?
I made unexplained investments after the close of my accounting year. Which year can the officer tax them in, and can he reopen an earlier year to do it?
My land was notified and an award was made under the Land Acquisition Act, but I thought the award was too low, negotiated a higher figure and executed a sale deed. The Assessing Officer now says that was a voluntary sale and denies s.10(37). Is he right?
How much am I actually required to disclose — and can they reopen because the officer drew the wrong conclusion?
The sanctioning authority just wrote 'yes' and signed. Is that a sanction?
A reassessment was done in between. Does the two-year clock for s.263 restart from it?
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