Section 269B — Competent Authority

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

Section 269B — Competent authority

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 It stands superseded by Chapter XX-C (pre-emptive purchase) and, for current transactions, by section 50C / section 56(2)(x).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: Empowers the Central Government to authorise Joint Commissioners to perform the functions of 'competent authority', to define their local limits and to provide for distribution/transfer of work among them.

Litigation profile: Jurisdictional / appointment provision; challenges arose chiefly as collateral attacks on want of jurisdiction.

A. COMMENTARY

Function

Section 269B is the appointment and jurisdiction provision. Only an officer duly authorised under it, acting within his allotted local limits, can be the 'competent authority' of section 269A(b). Want of valid authorisation or action outside the assigned area goes to jurisdiction and can be raised to defeat the proceedings.

Why it is litigation-relevant

Acquisition proceedings are penal and expropriatory; a foundational defect — the wrong officer, or an officer acting beyond his territorial competence, or misidentifying the parties — vitiates the initiation. Bani Roy Chowdhury illustrates how a foundational error (treating a confirming party as a transferor) undermines the authority's jurisdiction to proceed.

Candour

There is no substantial body of merits law on section 269B as such; the authorities below are cited for the jurisdictional discipline that the section embodies.

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.

Competent authority.

269B. (1) The Central Government may, by general or special order published in the Official Gazette,—

(a) authorise as many Joint Commissioners, as it thinks fit, to perform the functions of a competent authority under this Chapter ; and

(b) define the local limits within which the competent authorities shall perform their functions under this Chapter.

(2) In respect of any function to be performed by a competent authority under any provision of this Chapter in relation to any immovable property referred to in section 269C, the competent authority referred to therein shall,—

(a) in a case where such property is situate within the local limits of the jurisdiction of only one competent authority, be such competent authority ;

(b) in a case where such property is situate within the local limits of the jurisdiction of two or more competent authorities, be the competent authority empowered to perform such functions in relation to such property in accordance with rules made in this behalf by the Board under section 295.

Explanation.—For the purposes of this sub-section, 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 shall be deemed to be situate at the place where the building has been constructed or is to be constructed.

(3) No person shall be entitled to call in question the jurisdiction of a competent authority in respect of any immovable property after the expiry of thirty days from the date on which such competent authority initiates proceedings under section 269D for the acquisition of such property.

(4) Subject to the provisions of sub-section (3), where the jurisdiction of a competent authority is questioned, the competent authority shall, if satisfied with the correctness of the claim, by order in writing, determine the question accordingly and if he is not so satisfied, he shall refer the question to the Board and the Board shall, by order in writing, determine the question.

C. AUTHORITIES

Candour rule: section 269B is an appointment/jurisdiction provision with little direct authority; the decisions below illustrate the jurisdictional discipline.

Jurisdiction and foundational competence of the competent authority

Smt. Bani Roy Chowdhury v. Competent Authority, Inspecting Assistant Commissioner of Income-tax, Acquisition Range II — [1978] 112 ITR 111 (Calcutta); per Ramendra Mohan Datta J (decided 18 June 1976)

Held The presumptions in section 269C(2) operate only at the stage of adjudication of objections and cannot be pressed into service to form the 'reason to believe' for initiation under section 269C(1); at that threshold the authority must possess material independent of the statutory presumptions.

Also Simultaneously anchoring the belief to both clauses (a) and (b) of section 269C(1) betrayed non-application of mind; the authority had wrongly treated a confirming party (Hindusthan Building Society Ltd.) as a transferor, and had relied on irrelevant advertisements/comparables for fair market value.

Result The section 269D(1) notice was quashed — an early and influential statement of the procedural discipline governing Chapter XX-A.

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.