Section 269-I — Vesting of Property in Central Government

CHAPTER XX-A — ACQUISITION OF IMMOVABLE PROPERTIES IN CERTAIN CASES OF TRANSFER TO COUNTERACT EVASION OF TAX

Section 269-I — Vesting of property in Central Government

Case Laws & Commentary — Income-tax Act, 1961 (as amended by the Finance Act, 2026) — bharattax.co Treatise

Status: Historic / spent. Chapter XX-A was inserted by the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Act, 1972, with effect from 15 November 1972, and does not apply to transfers of immovable property made after 30 September 1986 (section 269RR). It stands superseded by Chapter XX-C and, for current transactions, by section 50C / section 56(2)(x).

Finance Act, 2026: No amendment. The Finance Act, 2026 does not touch any provision of Chapter XX-A.

Mechanism: On an acquisition order becoming final, the property vests absolutely in the Central Government free from all encumbrances, and provides for taking possession.

Litigation profile: Consequential vesting provision; little independent litigation.

A. COMMENTARY

Effect of vesting

Section 269-I is the divesting/vesting mechanism: once the acquisition order attains finality (appeals exhausted or time expired), the property vests in the Central Government free from encumbrances, and machinery for taking possession follows. It is the point of no return that makes the upstream safeguards — reason to believe, notice, hearing, appeal — so important.

Why the safeguards matter here

Because vesting is absolute and divests the citizen, the courts insist that everything preceding it be strictly lawful (Vimlaben; Bani Roy Chowdhury) and that natural justice be observed at section 269F (C.B. Gautam). A defect upstream prevents a valid vesting.

Candour

There is no separate merits law on the vesting clause; the cognate authorities supply the context.

B. STATUTORY TEXT (verbatim)

Reproduced verbatim from the Income-tax Act, 1961, as amended up to the Finance Act, 2025 (the Finance Act, 2026 makes no change). Page-header/footer artefacts of the source PDF have been removed; wording, clause-lettering and punctuation are unaltered.

Vesting of property in Central Government.

269-I. (1) As soon as may be after the order for acquisition of any immovable property made under sub-section (6) of section 269F becomes final, the competent authority may, by notice in writing, order any person who may be in possession of the immovable property to surrender or deliver possession thereof to the competent authority or any other person duly authorised in writing by the competent authority in this behalf, within thirty days of the date of the service of the notice.

Explanation.—For the purposes of this sub-section, an order for the acquisition of any immovable property (hereafter in this Explanation referred to as the order for acquisition) made under sub-section (6) of section 269F becomes final,—

(a) in a case where the order for acquisition is not made the subject of an appeal to the Appellate Tribunal under section 269G, upon the expiry of the period during which such appeal may be presented under that section;

(b) in a case where the order for acquisition is made the subject of an appeal to the Appellate Tribunal under section 269G,—

(i) if the order for acquisition is confirmed by the Appellate Tribunal and the order of the Appellate Tribunal is not made the subject of an appeal to the High Court under section 269H, upon the expiry of the period during which such appeal may be presented under that section to the High Court ;

(ii) if the order of the Appellate Tribunal is made the subject of an appeal to the High Court under section 269H, upon the confirmation of the order for acquisition by the High Court.

(2) If any person refuses or fails to comply with the notice under sub-section (1), the competent authority or other person duly authorised by the competent authority under that sub-section may take possession of the immovable property and may, for that purpose, use such force as may be necessary.

(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (2), the competent authority may, for the purpose of taking possession of any property referred to in sub-section (1), requisition the services of any police officer to assist him and it shall be the duty of such officer to comply with such requisition.

(4) When the possession of the immovable property is surrendered or delivered under sub-section (1) to the competent authority or a person duly authorised by him in that behalf or, as the case may be, when the possession thereof is taken under sub-section (2) or sub-section (3) by such authority or person, the property shall vest absolutely in the Central Government free from all encumbrances :

Provided that nothing in this sub-section shall operate to discharge the transferee or any other person (not being the Central Government) from liability in respect of such encumbrances and, notwithstanding anything contained in any other law, such liability may be enforced against the transferee or such other person by a suit for damages.

(5) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (4) or any other law or any instrument or any agreement for the time being in force, where an order for acquisition of any immovable property, being rights of the nature referred to in clause (b) of sub-section (1) of section 269AB, in or with respect to any building or part of a building which has been constructed or which is to be constructed, has become final, then, such order shall, by its own force, have the effect of—

(a) vesting such rights in the Central Government, and

(b) placing the Central Government in the same position in relation to such rights as the person in whom such rights would have continued to vest if such order had not become final, and the competent authority may issue such directions as he may deem fit to any person concerned for taking the necessary steps for compliance with the provisions of clauses (a) and (b).

(6) In the case of any immovable property, being rights of the nature referred to in clause (b) of sub-section

(1) of section 269AB, in or with respect to any building or part of a building, the provisions of sub-sections

(1), (2) and (3) shall have effect as if the references to immovable property therein were a reference to such building or, as the case may be, part of such building.

C. AUTHORITIES

Candour rule: vesting is consequential; the cognate authorities explain why upstream legality is indispensable to a valid vesting.

Cognate — legality upstream of vesting

CIT v. Smt. Vimlaben Bhagwandas Patel and Smt. Kamlaben Kanjibhai Patel — [1979] 118 ITR 134 (Gujarat) (decided 25 January 1979)

Facts Notice under section 269D(1) initiating acquisition of two industrial sheds transferred below the competent authority's estimate of fair market value; the transferee challenged initiation.

Held The leading judgment on Chapter XX-A. The acquisition machinery is expropriatory and penal in character and must be construed strictly. Initiation under section 269C(1) requires the competent authority to entertain reason to believe BOTH limbs of the 'twin conditions' — (i) that the fair market value exceeds the apparent consideration (understatement), and (ii) that the consideration was not truly stated with the ulterior object in clause (a) or (b) (reduction/evasion of the transferor's tax or concealment by the transferee). The statutory presumptions in section 269C(2) belong to the post-initiation adjudicatory stage (section 269F) and cannot supply the reason to believe at the threshold.

Also Where the authority records more than one ground, the initiation is not vitiated merely because one ground is later found defective, so long as a valid ground survives. Reasons must have a rational nexus with the material.

C.B. Gautam v. Union of India — [1993] 199 ITR 530 (SC)

Cognate Decided on Chapter XX-C (section 269UD pre-emptive purchase), the successor scheme. The Supreme Court held that pre-emptive purchase / acquisition for undervaluation can be resorted to only where there is 'significant undervaluation' (of the order of 15%), which raises a rebuttable presumption of an attempt to evade tax, and that the principles of natural justice — a reasonable opportunity of hearing — must be read into the provision before an order divesting a citizen of property is made, even where the statute is silent.

Relevance The Court expressly traced the lineage of the pre-emptive-purchase scheme to Chapter XX-A; its reasoning on undervaluation-as-rebuttable-presumption and on natural justice is directly transposable to sections 269C and 269F.