Notification No. 137

No public servant shall produce before any person or authority any such document or record or any information or computerised data directed under section 138

What this is

Notification No. 137 was published on 23 May 2003. Its subject is No public servant shall produce before any person or authority any such document or record or any information or computerised data directed under section 138.

The provisions it speaks to

Left, the provision of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as the instrument itself names it. Right, the section of the Income-tax Act, 2025 that the department’s own concordance maps it to — which is where the same ground is now covered.

Under the 1961 Act	Now
s.138	s.258

The instrument, as the Board published it

The words below are the department’s own, reproduced from its published text. Where the department’s copy carried a publisher’s notes after the instrument, those are not reproduced.

Notification No : 137

Section(s) Referred :

Date of Issue : 23/5/2003

Notification No. 137 of 2003, dt. 23rd May, 2003

In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 138 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961) (hereinafter referred to as the Act), the Central Government having regard to all the relevant factors, hereby directs that no public servant shall produce before any person or authority any such document or record or any information or computerised data or part thereof as comes into his or her possession during the discharge of official duties:

Provided that nothing contained hereinbefore shall apply-

(i) to the disclosure of information (including the production of such document or record or supply of computerised data) in respect of allotment of Permanent Account Number, Tax Deduction Account Number and computerisation of Income-tax records relating to the income-tax assessees, to the persons or agencies as the Director General of Income-tax (Systems) may decide from time to time, in accordance with directions and guidelines issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes;

(ii) to the disclosure of any information in accordance with the notifications issued under section 138 from time to time.

[F.No. 225/21/2003/ITA-II]

On the same provision

Other instruments in this library that name the same provision of the 1961 Act. They are not necessarily still operative, and a later one may have replaced an earlier one without saying so.

Notification No. 54/2025 [F. No. 225/213/2024/ITA-II] / SO 2479(E) — Secretary to the Government of Maharashtra specified under section 138 3 June 2025
Notification No. 20/2025 [F.No. 225/33/2025/ITA-II] / SO 1241(E) — 2 the Gazette of INDIA : Extraordinary [Part Ii—sec. 3(ii)] 18 March 2025
Notification No. 12/2025 [F. No. 225/235/2024/ITA-II] / SO 524(E) — 2 the Gazette of INDIA : Extraordinary [Part Ii—sec. 3(ii)] 30 January 2025
Notification No. 106/2024 [F. No. 225/181/2024/ITA-II] / SO 4276(E) — Principal Secretary to Government & Chairman specified under section 138 1 October 2024
Notification No. 52/2024 [F. No. 225/106/2024/ITA-II] / SO 2661(E) — [To BE Published in the Gazette of INDIA, Extraordinary, Part II, section 3, Sub-section (ii)] 9 July 2024
Notification No. 35/2024 [F. No. 225/196/2023/ITA-II] / SO 1538(E) — 2 the Gazette of INDIA : Extraordinary [Part Ii—sec. 3(ii)] 22 March 2024

← Notification No. 138 · Notification No. 136 →

What a notification is. A notification is made under a power the Act itself gives, and within that power it is law — unlike a circular, which only binds the department. Its reach is the reach of the enabling provision and no wider, and the date it carries decides from when it works.

Source: the Income Tax Department’s own published text — its page for this instrument.