Chandigarh, Sept. 12 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has declared Section 147-A of the Income Tax Act, 1961, unconstitutional, holding that the legislature could not, through a retrospective "clarification", circumvent findings of constitutional courts without removing the legal basis of those judgments.

While disposing of a clutch of 700 petitions, the division bench of justice Deepak Sibal and Justice Rupinderjit Chahal quashed the Section 148 notices issued to the petitioners by their jurisdictional assessing officers (AOs), holding that such notices are required to be issued through randomised automated allocation and in a faceless manner under Section 151A of the Act, according to a scheme notified on March 29, 2022.

Under Sec...