Rule 8 — Computation of period of stay in India for an Indian citizen, being a member of the crew of a foreign bound ship. Made under s.6 of the Income-tax Act, 2025.
Rule 8 gives effect to Section 6 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. A rule cannot go beyond the section it serves: where the two seem to differ, the section governs.
Sub-rule (1) applies to an individual who is a citizen of India and a member of the crew of a foreign bound ship. For the purposes of section 6(6), the period or periods of his stay in India in respect of an eligible voyage do not include the period computed under sub-rule (2).
Sub-rule (2) fixes that excluded period by two entries in the Continuous Discharge Certificate: it begins on the date entered in the Certificate for joining the ship for the eligible voyage, and ends on the date entered in the Certificate for signing off from the ship for that voyage.
Sub-rule (3) defines the two terms the computation rests on. "Continuous Discharge Certificate" takes its meaning from the Merchant Shipping (Continuous Discharge Certificate-cum-Seafarer's Identity Document) Rules, 2001 made under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958. "Eligible voyage" means a voyage undertaken by a ship engaged in the carriage of passengers or freight in international traffic where a voyage originating at an Indian port has a port outside India as its destination, and a voyage originating outside India has an Indian port as its destination.
Section 6 makes residence turn on days of physical presence in India, and a seafarer on an international voyage is physically in Indian waters or at an Indian port for part of a voyage that is not, in substance, a stay in India. The section does not say how those days are to be counted for such a person. The rule supplies the counting method, and ties it to a document the seafarer already carries and the shipping authorities already maintain, rather than to the individual's own account of where he was.
The exclusion is not an estimate and not a self-declaration: it runs from the joining date to the signing-off date as entered in the Continuous Discharge Certificate, so the Certificate governs, and days outside those two entries are ordinary days of stay in India that count. The concession attaches to the voyage, not to the employment — a voyage qualifies only if it is international at one end and Indian at the other, so a purely coastal voyage between two Indian ports is not an eligible voyage and none of its days are excluded. The rule also does not decide residence; section 6(6) does. It only removes certain days from the count that the section makes.
A citizen of India serving on a ship joins at Mumbai on 5 June and signs off at Mumbai on 20 December, both dates as entered in his Continuous Discharge Certificate, the ship having sailed to and from ports outside India. The whole period from 5 June to 20 December is excluded from his period of stay in India under sub-rule (2), even though the ship touched Indian ports within it. Days before 5 June and after 20 December spent in India are counted normally for section 6(6).
A seafarer meets this rule when working out his residential status before filing a return, and again if an Assessing Officer questions that status; the document actually produced is the Continuous Discharge Certificate with its joining and signing-off entries.
the period or periods of stay in India in respect of an eligible voyage, shall not include the period computed under sub-rule (2)
the period beginning on the date entered into the Continuous Discharge Certificate in respect of joining the ship by the said individual for the eligible voyage and ending on the date entered into the Continuous Discharge Certificate in respect of signing off by that individual from the ship in respect of such voyage