Search, survey, demand and recovery Became Form 86

Form 45C

Warrant of authorisation under sub-section (1) of section 132A of the Income-tax Act, 1961

What this form is

Form 45C belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 86 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. It is a warrant of authorisation — the written authority without which the action it permits is not lawful. This one runs the other way. The department writes it and the assessee receives it, so the thing to read is what it asserts and under what power.

Which provision requires it

Left, the provision as the department’s description names it. Right, where the same ground is covered now — taken from the department’s own section and rule concordances, not worked out by us.

What the description names	Where it sits now
section 132A of the 1961 Act	section 248, section 249, section 261

Rules of the 2026 Rules that work the same section. rule 151 (Requisition of books of account, etc. under section 248). This is our own matching — we have paired the section the form names with the rules whose headings name that same section. The department has not said that any of these rules prescribes this form.

What it became under the 2026 Rules

The description changed with the number, and the change is worth reading: the 2026 wording points at the Income-tax Act, 2025, and a great deal of what used to sit in a section of the 1961 Act now sits in a Schedule.

Under the 2026 Rules	What the department calls it
Form 86	Warrant of authorisation under section 248(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (30 of 2025)

Where you meet it

You meet it when the department is acting, not asking — a search, a demand, a recovery, a person about to leave India. The first question with any of them is whether the power named on the form was actually available.

On the same provision

Decisions in this library that turn on the same provision of the 1961 Act that this form names. They are about the provision, not about the form; a case is listed here because it argues the section, and none of them is authority on how the form itself is to be filled in.

Near it

Other forms we have put in the same group — search, survey, demand and recovery.

Form 3CEG, Form 3CEH, Form 3CEI, Form 6C, Form 7, Form 28, Form 28A, Form 30A, Form 30B, Form 30C, Form 31, Form 33

Get the form

Published by the Income Tax Department. The link goes to their file, not a copy of it — a form is revised without notice and a stale copy is worse than none. Both are here because a notice, an order or a judgment may name either number.

Form 45C — 1962 Rules (PDF) Fillable version Form 86 — 2026 Rules (PDF) All forms at the department

What here is the department’s and what is ours. The form number, the sentence describing it, and the pairing of the old form with the form it became are all taken from the Income Tax Department’s own published forms concordance, and are reproduced as the department wrote them — including its abbreviations and its occasional typing errors. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the form is, the reading of which provision requires it, the grouping the form sits in, the note on where you meet it, and the selection of cases. The department has not said that this form serves that section; we have read that off the description and off its own section concordance, and we can be wrong. Before you rely on any of it, open the form.