Limitation under amended reassessment timeline: reassessment notices issued after surviving pre-amendment period are time-barred and invalid.

Reassessment notices and consequential orders issued after the surviving pre-amendment limitation period are time-barred: applying the surviving-period principle, the pre-amendment limitation continued to govern assessment years beginning on or before 01.04.2021, so the last date for valid notice for the relevant assessment year was 30.06.2021; notices dated 19.03.2024 and 04.04.2024 therefore fall outside the preserved period and cannot satisfy the temporal requirement of the first proviso to the amended reassessment regime, with those notices and subsequent proceedings quashed.

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Issues: Whether notices and order issued under sections 148A(b), 148A(d) and 148 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 for Assessment Year 2013-14 are barred by limitation under the first proviso to section 149(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961.

Analysis: Section 149(1)(b) as amended provides a ten-year window for issuing reassessment notices subject to the first proviso which restricts retrospective application for assessment years beginning on or before 01.04.2021. The first proviso preserves the survival of the pre-amendment time limit (six years) for those assessment years; consequently, a notice for such past years is permissible under the new regime only if the time limit under the old regime remained extant. Applying the surviving-period principle established by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Union of India v. Rajeev Bansal, the last date on which a valid notice could have been issued for AY 2013-14 was 30.06.2021. The impugned notices and order dated 19.03.2024 and 04.04.2024 fall beyond that surviving period and thus do not satisfy the proviso's temporal requirement.

Conclusion: The notices dated 19.03.2024 and 04.04.2024 and the order dated 04.04.2024 are barred by limitation under the first proviso to section 149(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 and are quashed and set aside; subsequent proceedings consequent thereto are also quashed.

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