Section 269UK — Restrictions on Revocation or Alteration of Agreements

CHAPTER XX-C — PURCHASE BY CENTRAL GOVERNMENT OF IMMOVABLE PROPERTIES IN CERTAIN CASES OF TRANSFER

Section 269UK — Restrictions on revocation or alteration of certain agreements for the transfer of immovable property or on transfer of certain immovable property

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

Status: Historic / spent. Chapter XX-C was inserted by the Finance Act, 1986 and brought into force area-wise under section 269U; by section 269UP it does not apply to any transfer of immovable property effected on or after 1 July 2002. The pre-emptive-purchase machinery is therefore dormant. The section is reproduced and annotated in full for completeness of the Treatise.

Finance Act, 2026: No amendment. The Finance Act, 2026 does not touch any provision of Chapter XX-C (sections 269U to 269UP).

Mechanism: Bars the parties, once a statement (Form 37-I) has been filed, from revoking or altering the agreement for transfer, or from transferring the property otherwise than in accordance with the agreement, without the prior permission of the appropriate authority.

Litigation profile: Anti-circumvention provision; no significant independent merits litigation.

A. COMMENTARY

Freezing the transaction

Section 269UK freezes the declared transaction. Once the agreement for transfer has been reduced to a statement and filed, the parties may not revoke or alter the agreement, or transfer the property otherwise than in accordance with it, except with the prior permission of the appropriate authority. The purpose is obvious: without such a freeze, parties could file a clean Form 37-I, obtain a no-objection certificate, and then quietly change the price or the terms, defeating the entire scheme.

Relationship to the Chapter's object

The provision protects the integrity of the value comparison the authority is required to make. The figure on which pre-emption (or clearance) turns is the apparent consideration in the filed agreement; allowing unilateral revision after filing would make that figure meaningless. Section 269UK is therefore the anti-circumvention complement to sections 269UC and 269UD.

Candour

The section is preventive machinery and has produced no separate reported merits decision. It is read alongside the limited-function principle (the authority deals only with the declared transaction) established in Tanvi Trading.

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 to Chapter XX-C). Page-header/footer artefacts of the source PDF have been removed; wording, clause-lettering and punctuation are unaltered.

Restrictions on revocation or alteration of certain agreements for the transfer of immovable property or on transfer of certain immovable property.

269UK. (1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, no person shall revoke or alter an agreement for the transfer of an immovable property or transfer such property in respect of which a statement has been furnished under section 269UC unless,—

(a) the appropriate authority has not made an order for the purchase of the immovable property by the Central Government under section 269UD and the period specified for the making of such order has expired ; or

(b) in a case where an order for the purchase of the immovable property by the Central Government has been made under sub-section (1) of section 269UD, the order stands abrogated under sub-section (1) of section 269UH.

(2) Any transfer of any immovable property made in contravention of the provisions of sub-section (1) shall be void.

C. AUTHORITIES

Candour rule: section 269UK is anti-circumvention machinery with no direct authority; the decision below supplies the cognate limited-function principle.

Cognate — the authority deals with the declared transaction

Tanvi Trading & Credits (P) Ltd. v. Appropriate Authority (1991) 188 ITR 623 (Delhi)

Court Delhi High Court; decided 28 November 1990.

Held Section 269UD confers only a pre-emptive right to purchase at the apparent consideration (or to issue a no-objection certificate). The appropriate authority has no jurisdiction to adjudicate upon the legality or validity of the proposed transaction or the transferor's title; such matters are relevant only to the discretion whether to exercise the right of purchase.

Relevance Defines the narrow scope of the appropriate authority's function under sections 269UC, 269UD and 269UL; repeatedly followed, including in DLF Universal.