Allowing the petition, the Court held that   there was no justification for the Department either in law or on fact, to subject the assessee to a third round of reassessment proceedings under section 147 merely by invoking the liberty granted in UOI  v. Ashish Agarwal (2022) 444 ITR 1(SC) The Department was bound by its decision in full when it dropped the second round of proceedings pursuant to the order of the High Court in the writ petition against the second notice issued under the new procedure. After the passing of the order by the High Court in respect of the second notice, proceedings had been commenced afresh by issuance of a notice under section 148A(b) and those proceedings had culminated by issuance of notice under section 148 dated April 18, 2022 pursuant to which no notice under section 143(2) had been issued and the proceedings lapsed. The explanation tendered for issuance of a notice under section 148A(b) for the third time on June 2, 2022 was fallacious and unacceptable as the liberty granted by the Supreme Court in its decision dated May 4, 2022 would be available only in those situations where the matters stood at an initial or preliminary stage of notice for reassessment and not where the proceedings had been carried forward to the stage of passing of order under section 148A(d) and issuance of notice under section 148. The Department’s submission that the proceedings initiated pursuant to the first notice stood revived was also factually incorrect as there were material differences between the reasons in the first notice and those in notice under section 148A(b) dated June 2, 2022. If the third round of proceedings was only a revival of the earlier proceedings, the reasons ought to have been identical but they were not. The notices and consequential proceedings were quashed.(AY.2015-16)