2025 (5) TMI 979

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....notice dated 30.03.2024 [the impugned notice] issued under Section 148 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 [the Act] seeking to reopen the assessment in respect of the Assessment Year [AY] 2014-15. 2. The petitioner's case is that the impugned notice has been issued beyond the period of the limitation. 3. In the present case, the petitioner had filed its return of income for the AY 2014-15 on 21.09.2014 declaring the income of Rs. 9,34,030/-. On 09.06.2022, a search was conducted under Section 132 (1) of the Act at the premises of an individual namely, Sh. Naresh Kumar Kejriwal. During the said search, certain documents were found and it was alleged that the same contained details of foreign transactions from a company in Nigeria named Everes....

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.... under: "8. Undisputedly, and in terms of Section 153C (3) of the Act, any search if conducted after 01 April 2021, would cease to be regulated by that provision. Sub-section (3), in that sense, embodies a sunset clause insofar as the applicability of Section 153C is concerned. The First Proviso to Section 149 (1), however, bids us to go back in a point of time, and to examine whether a reopening would sustain bearing in mind the timeframes as they stood embodied in Section 149 (1) (b) or Section 153A and 153C, as the case may be. The First Proviso essentially requires us to undertake that consideration bearing in mind the timeframes which stood specified in Sections 149, 153A and 153C as they stood prior to the commencement of Fin....

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....oviso to Section 153C introduces a legal fiction on the basis of which the commencement date for computation of the six year or the ten year block is deemed to be the date of receipt of books of accounts by the jurisdictional AO. The identification of the starting block for the purposes of computation of the six and the ten year period is governed by the First Proviso to Section 153C, which significantly shifts the reference point spoken of in Section 153A (1), while defining the point from which the period of the "relevant assessment year" is to be calculated, to the date of receipt of the books of accounts, documents or assets seized by the jurisdictional AO of the non-searched person. The shift of the relevant date in the case of a non-s....

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....oned from the 31st day of March of the AY relevant to the year of search. This, since undisputedly, Explanation 1 of Section 153A requires us to reckon it "from the end of the assessment year". This distinction would have to necessarily be acknowledged in light of the statute having consciously adopted the phraseology "immediately preceding" when it be in relation to the six year period and employing the expression "from the end of the assessment year" while speaking of the ten year block." 8. Bearing in mind the aforesaid principles, the block of ten assessment years is required to be reckoned from the end of the AY 2024-25 being the assessment year relevant to the financial year in which the impugned notice under Section 148 was issued....