Rule 24 — Notification of infrastructure facility for the purposes of section 32(e). Made under s.32 of the Income-tax Act, 2025.
Rule 24 gives effect to Section 32 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. A rule cannot go beyond the section it serves: where the two seem to differ, the section governs.
The rule sets the three conditions a public facility must fulfil to be eligible to be notified as an infrastructure facility under section 32(e).
Clause (a) is about ownership: the facility must be owned by a company registered in India, or by a consortium of such companies, or by an authority, a board, a corporation or any other body established or constituted under any Central Act or State Act.
Clause (b) is about the arrangement: the facility must have entered into an agreement with the Central Government, a State Government, a local authority or any other statutory body for developing, or operating and maintaining, or developing, operating and maintaining a new infrastructure facility similar in nature to an infrastructure facility referred to in the Explanation to section 80-ia(4)(i) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, as it existed prior to its repeal.
Clause (c) is about timing: it must have started or start operating and maintaining such infrastructure facility on or after the 1st April, 1995.
Section 32(e) turns on a facility having been notified as an infrastructure facility, and the rule supplies the eligibility test the notification applies. It borrows the description of the facilities themselves from the Explanation to section 80-ia(4)(i) of the repealed 1961 Act rather than writing a fresh list, and adds the two things that list does not settle: who must own the facility, and that it must be under an agreement with a Government, a local authority or a statutory body.
| What | Figure | The condition on it | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earliest date of starting to operate and maintain the facility | On or after the 1st April, 1995 | The facility has started or starts operating and maintaining the infrastructure facility | Clause (c) |
The three conditions are cumulative — the word joining clauses (b) and (c) is "and" — so ownership, agreement and start date must all be satisfied. The agreement in clause (b) must be with the Central Government, a State Government, a local authority or any other statutory body; a contract with a private counterparty, however large the facility, does not answer it. The description of what counts as an infrastructure facility is not written out in this rule at all: it is carried across from the Explanation to section 80-ia(4)(i) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as that provision existed prior to its repeal, and the facility must be similar in nature to one referred to there and must be new. Clause (c) fixes the earliest permissible start of operation and maintenance, not a deadline, so a facility that begins operating years later is not shut out by it. Eligibility is only the threshold: the notification under section 32(e) is a separate act.
A consortium of two companies registered in India signs a concession agreement with a State Government to develop, operate and maintain a new facility of a kind described in the Explanation to section 80-ia(4)(i) of the 1961 Act, and begins operating it in 2028. Ownership under clause (a), the agreement under clause (b) and the start date under clause (c) are all met, so the facility is eligible to be notified. A partnership firm with an identical agreement would fail clause (a), because it is neither a company registered in India, a consortium of such companies, nor a body established or constituted under a Central or State Act.
You meet it when a facility is put up for notification as an infrastructure facility under section 32(e), and in the notification itself; the taxpayer's own dealings are with section 32(e) and the notified status of the facility rather than with this rule.
it is owned by a company registered in India or by a consortium of such companies or by an authority or a board or a corporation or any other body established or constituted under any Central Act or State Act
it has started or starts operating and maintaining such infrastructure facility on or after the 1st April, 1995