Reopening objections must be decided first before reassessment can continue under the Income-tax Act.

Reassessment cannot proceed while objections to a reopening notice remain undecided, because the reopening challenge must be dealt with before further reassessment steps are taken. Here, the assessment had already been completed under Section 143(3) and the assessee had filed objections to the Section 148 notice, but they were still pending. The High Court therefore directed the authority to decide the objections within the stipulated time and disposed of the writ petition without examining the merits of the reassessment.

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Issues: Whether reassessment proceedings could continue without deciding the assessee's objections to notice under Section 148 of the Income-tax Act, 1961.

Analysis: The assessment for the relevant year had already been completed under Section 143(3), and objections to the reopening notice had been filed but remained undecided. The governing procedure requires that objections raised against reopening be first disposed of before further reassessment steps are taken.

Outcome: The petitioner was granted a procedural direction requiring the authority to decide the objections within the stipulated time, and the writ petition was disposed of without any adjudication on the merits of the reassessment.

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