Section 269-O — Appearance by Authorised Representative or Registered Valuer

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

Section 269-O — Appearance by authorised representative or registered valuer

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 It stands superseded by Chapter XX-C and, for current transactions, by section 50C / section 56(2)(x).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: Entitles a person required or permitted to attend before the competent authority or the Appellate Tribunal to be represented by an authorised representative or a registered valuer, subject to the usual disqualifications.

Litigation profile: Representation provision; no independent merits litigation.

A. COMMENTARY

Right of representation

Section 269-O secures the citizen's right to professional representation — by an authorised representative (as defined for the Act) and, given the centrality of valuation, by a registered valuer — before the competent authority and the Tribunal. It is part of the fair-hearing fabric the courts insisted upon.

Candour

No reported decision turns on section 269-O; it is procedural and facilitative.

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.

Appearance by authorised representative or registered valuer.

269-O. Any person who is entitled or required to attend before a competent authority or the Appellate Tribunal in any proceeding under this Chapter, otherwise than when required to attend personally for examination on oath or affirmation, may attend—

(a) by an authorised representative in connection with any matter ;

(b) by a registered valuer in connection with any matter relating to the valuation of any immovable property for the purposes of this Chapter or the estimation of the amount by which the compensation payable under sub-section (1) of section 269J for the acquisition of any immovable property may be reduced or, as the case may be, increased in accordance with the provisions of clause (a) or clause (b) of sub-section (2) of that section.

Explanation.—In this section,—

(i) "authorised representative" has the same meaning as in section 288;

(ii) "registered valuer" has the same meaning as in clause (oaa) of section 2 of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957 (27 of 1957).

C. AUTHORITIES

Candour rule: a representation provision; cited cognate authority supplies the fair-hearing context.

Cognate — representation as part of the fair hearing

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.