Section 269UN — Order to be Final and Conclusive

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

Section 269UN — Order of appropriate authority to be final and conclusive

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: Save as otherwise provided in the Chapter, an order under section 269UD(1) or section 269UF(2) is final and conclusive and shall not be called in question in any proceeding under the Act or under any other law.

Litigation profile: The finality clause — central to the scope-of-judicial-review jurisprudence.

A. COMMENTARY

The finality clause

Section 269UN declares that, save as otherwise provided in the Chapter, an order under section 269UD(1) (purchase) or section 269UF(2) (consideration in the specified case) is final and conclusive and may not be questioned in any proceeding under the Act or any other law. There is no appeal to the Commissioner (Appeals) or to the Appellate Tribunal; the order is intended to be a one-shot, time-bound decision.

Finality does not oust judicial review — Sudha Patil

A finality clause does not, however, oust the writ jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226. Appropriate Authority v. Smt. Sudha Patil holds the balance: the absence of an appeal does not enlarge the High Court into an appellate forum that can re-value the property, but the court retains its supervisory jurisdiction to correct jurisdictional error, breach of natural justice and perversity. C.B. Gautam itself is the proof — the Supreme Court tested the scheme and the order on constitutional and natural-justice grounds notwithstanding the finality clause.

Why finality matters to the scheme

Finality is the price of speed. The Chapter required the State to decide within a tight window and the citizen's title not to remain indefinitely in doubt; conferring finality (subject only to writ review) served that object. The provision is thus the doctrinal anchor of the limited-review rule discussed under sections 269UD and 269UF.

Candour

Section 269UN has no independent merits law of its own; its content is supplied by the judicial-review jurisprudence built on Sudha Patil and C.B. Gautam.

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.

Order of appropriate authority to be final and conclusive.

269UN. Save as otherwise provided in this Chapter, any order made under sub-section (1) of section 269UD or any order made under sub-section (2) of section 269UF shall be final and conclusive and shall not be called in question in any proceeding under this Act or under any other law for the time being in force.

C. AUTHORITIES

The authorities below establish that finality under section 269UN coexists with limited judicial review.

Finality and the scope of judicial review

Appropriate Authority v. Smt. Sudha Patil (1999) 235 ITR 118 (SC)

Court Supreme Court of India.

Held Merely because no statutory appeal is provided against a pre-emptive purchase order, the supervisory writ jurisdiction of the High Court is not enlarged into an appellate power. The High Court cannot substitute its own valuation for that of the appropriate authority; it may interfere only on established grounds of judicial review (jurisdictional error, breach of natural justice, perversity).

Relevance The leading decision on the scope of judicial review of section 269UD orders; read with section 269UN (finality). Limits the citizen's writ remedy to legality, not merits, of valuation.

C.B. Gautam v. Union of India (1993) 199 ITR 530 / 110 CTR 179 / 65 Taxman 440 / (1993) 1 SCC 78 (SC)

Court / Bench Supreme Court of India; decided 17 November 1992 (test case transferred from the Delhi High Court).

Issue Constitutional validity of Chapter XX-C, and whether a pre-emptive purchase order under section 269UD can be made without affording the parties a hearing and without recording reasons.

Held The Chapter was upheld in substance, but the Court read into it the principles of natural justice: a reasonable opportunity to show cause must be given to the intending purchaser and seller before an order under section 269UD is made, and the order must record reasons. Pre-emptive purchase can be resorted to only where there is significant undervaluation of about 15 per cent or more, raising a rebuttable presumption of an attempt to evade tax. The words 'free from all encumbrances' in section 269UE(1) were read down so as not to defeat bona fide tenants and encumbrancers in possession.

Relevance The foundational decision for the entire Chapter. It governs sections 269UA, 269UC, 269UD, 269UE and 269UF and is the source of the hearing-and-reasons discipline applied throughout. (Followed Kraipak v. UOI AIR 1970 SC 150 and Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corpn. (1985) Suppl. 2 SCR 51.)