A jewellery retailer assessed at a ward in Jaipur received a notice under s.148A(1) in November 2025 and a notice under s.148 in January 2026 for AY 2021-22. Both were signed and issued by the Income Tax Officer of the ward, both carry a Document Identification Number, and nothing on either shows that the case was allocated through the automated system. The information is a mismatch of Rs 1,15,00,000 between reported purchases and third-party data on cash purchases from two bullion dealers. The firm previously engaged had drafted a writ petition on the single ground that only the faceless assessing officer may issue a reassessment notice, and the client has been told this is a certain win. The client also has a full purchase register, stock records and dealer confirmations, none of which has yet been filed.
Read the status flag on the leading authority before the petition is filed. The holding that only the faceless assessing officer may issue a reassessment notice is recorded in this library as superseded by amendment, and there is a competing line of High Court authority holding that the jurisdictional officer and the faceless officer have concurrent jurisdiction. Leading a writ on that ground now risks losing the petition, spending the client's money and burning the time in which the substantive reply to the show-cause should have been built.
One High Court quashed a reassessment notice on the ground that under the scheme framed for faceless reassessment only the faceless assessing officer may issue the notice through automated allocation, with no concurrent jurisdiction. That holding is recorded in this library as superseded by amendment. Another High Court has dismissed the same challenge, holding that the jurisdictional and faceless officers have concurrent jurisdiction, that the scheme does not extinguish the jurisdictional officer's power to issue notices, and that the faceless assessment provision is procedural and is not itself a source of the power to reassess. The library now carries the next chapter as well: a provision inserted with retrospective effect from 1 April 2021 defining the assessing officer for these notices as an officer other than the faceless centre and its assessment units, and a Supreme Court order of April 2026 setting aside the judgments on the taxpayer-favouring side and remitting them so that the validity and retrospectivity of that provision can be argued, with further assessment and reassessment proceedings stayed meanwhile and nothing decided on the merits. So the ground is neither dead nor good, it is open. Read the entry with its own caveat in mind, that it is built from reports of the order rather than from the order text, and check the position again before the petition is settled.
A ground that goes to jurisdiction is best preserved by being pleaded in terms at the earliest stage, even where it is currently against the assessee, because it cannot easily be introduced later as an afterthought. The appeal ladder has fixed windows at each rung, and the High Court will entertain the point only as a substantial question of law, so it needs to exist in the record below. That is now more than prudence: the constitutional challenge to the retrospective provision is live and undecided, and the library records that where the assessment has already been framed the appeal is the place the ground has to be kept alive, and kept alive as a jurisdictional ground so that it is not treated as waived. Preserving costs nothing; leading on it costs the case.
The identity of the officer can still be attacked on ordinary grounds. The Tribunal has quashed an assessment as made by a non-jurisdictional Assessing Officer where the assessed income exceeded the monetary threshold fixed for that officer's pecuniary jurisdiction. With a mismatch of over a crore alleged, whether an Income Tax Officer rather than an Assistant or Deputy Commissioner should hold the case is a real question, and it is answered by the Board's own allocation instructions and the assessee's returned income, not by the faceless scheme.
The Supreme Court has held that where an income-tax authority ceases to exercise jurisdiction and is succeeded by another, the successor may continue the proceeding from the stage at which the predecessor left it, and a second notice issued by the successor is a continuation rather than an abandonment and fresh start. An argument that the reassessment became time-barred because a new officer issued a new notice will therefore fail on that authority.
The Board required a computer-generated number on communications relating to assessment and enquiry, and a communication issued outside the permitted exceptions without one was to be treated as invalid and deemed never to have been issued. That position has moved twice: the governing circular has been replaced and a curative provision has been inserted that blunts such challenges retrospectively. Both notices here carry a number in any event, so the check is a two-minute file note rather than a ground.
Limitation and sanction operate whoever issued the notice. Section 149 bars a notice after three years and three months from the end of the relevant assessment year unless the officer holds books, documents or evidence showing escaped income of fifty lakh rupees or more, and a notice beyond that is issued without jurisdiction. Prior approval of the specified authority is a separate condition, and approval by the wrong rank is not approval; what remains arguable after the recent curative provision is the timing and identity of the approving officer rather than the adequacy of the words used.
The trigger under the current regime is information which suggests escaped income, and the information relied on has to be disclosed to the assessee, so the purchase register, stock records and dealer confirmations should be filed against the specific mismatch rather than held back for appeal. If the purchases are ultimately treated as unexplained, the charge is at the flat rate applicable to that family of sections rather than at ordinary rates, which changes the client's exposure materially and should be explained before instructions are taken.
On the authority in this library the faceless-only challenge is not a safe ground, and a petition led on it is likely to be dismissed or to be overtaken by the statutory change. What actually decides these cases is whether the mismatch survives the purchase and stock records, and that is fought at the show-cause stage and then, if an addition is made, at CIT(A). A well-preserved but subordinate jurisdiction ground costs nothing and occasionally becomes valuable if the position shifts again, which is the realistic reason to plead it.