Allowing the petition the Court held that ,notification No. S. O. 1620(E), dt 18-5-2017,uploaded on Website of E-Gazette on 22-5-2017.Department of publication certifying date as 18-5-2017.Notice and order of provisional attachment by Officer not authorised by Notification On 19-5-2017  is held to be not valid.    “The” is a word before nouns, with the specifying or particularising effect as opposed to the indefinite or generalising force of “a” or “an”. It determines what particular thing is, meant, i. e., what particular thing to assume to be meant. “The” is always mentioned to denote a particular thing or a person”. Section 24 of the Act refers to the “Initiating Officer”. Therefore, it denotes “a particular officer or a person” and it cannot be generalised and stated that all Deputy Commissioners of Income-tax and Assistant Commissioners of Income-tax can function as the Initiating Officer under section 24.

The de facto doctrine does not come to the rescue of an intruder or usurper or total stranger to the office and the doctrine can have no application to the case of the person, who is not the holder of the office.

Thus, when a person, who has no authority to initiate proceedings under the Benami Act or issue orders of attachment under the Benami Act, does so, the very foundation on which he has done such act collapses and the proceedings have to be held to be wholly without jurisdiction.

Held accordingly, that admittedly the second respondent was not the Deputy Commissioner of Income-tax (Benami Prohibition), but the Deputy Commissioner of Income-tax, Corporate Circle (I). The second respondent lacked inherent jurisdiction to initiate proceedings as on May 19, 2017 and the notice, the prohibitory order and the order of attachment were without jurisdiction and consequently liable to be set aside.