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c. An irrevocable trust is a condition precedent for grant of registration and exemption. The property of a public trust is public property once endowed and row number 6 in Form No. 10AB simply seeks to carry out or implement the law. There is a direct nexus between the legal principle of not allowing revocable trusts to claim exemption and how the Revenue seeks to achieve that by obligating trusts to have irrevocability clauses in their trust deeds. Hence, there can be nothing arbitrary if only the law is being upheld by virtue of row number 6 in Form No. 10AB.

MARCH 09, 2026 S.R.JOSHI 1-wpl-7587-2026.doc d. Section 332 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 provides that an exemption will be available only to an irrevocable trust which means that only an irrevocable trust can be considered for the purposes of registration of a public trust.

37. It can be seen that even under the new Act what has to be demonstrated as a condition for grant of registration is that the trust is irrevocable, which could be established by indicating the absence of any clause empowering the settlor to revoke the trust. There is a difference MARCH 09, 2026 S.R.JOSHI 1-wpl-7587-2026.doc between a trust being irrevocable and insisting on an irrevocability clause in the Trust Deed. What section 332(2)(b) requires is that the trust is irrevocable. As already discussed earlier, in the absence of a specific revocability clause, a public charitable trust is always irrevocable. Further, absence of any specific clause of revocability makes the trust irrevocable. Thus, we don't find that the conditions of section 332(2) of the Income Tax Act, 2025 would not be fulfilled on account of a mere absence of an irrevocability clause in the Trust Deed.

42. This takes us to the next contention raised on behalf of Respondent No. 1, viz., that it is not feasible for a Commissioner to examine various recitals of every Trust Deed to confirm irrevocability, and therefore, an express clause is necessary for administrative clarity and to prevent litigation. In this regard, it would be relevant to reproduce paragraph 11 of the Affidavit in reply as under:

"11. The Petitioners have also contended that a public charitable trust is irrevocable by operation of law and, therefore, absence of an explicit irrevocability clause in the trust deed cannot be a ground for rejection. It is contended that the trust is deemed irrevocable. It is submitted that a deed of trust may contain several recitals. Now, if the trust deed is silent as to revocability i.e there is no express revocable clause in the trust deed, but there is a recital in any form for provision of re-transfer of the trust assets or income or property to the settlor, then the trust is deemed to be revocable within the meaning of Sections 60-63 of the Act. In such circumstances, the trust cannot be granted registration since it is hit by Sections 60-63 of the Act read alongwith section 11 of the Act which makes the said sections have overriding effect before any exemption is granted under Section 11. The PCIT cannot examine in each case the nature of the various recitals or whether there is any scope of retransfer of trust assets which is highly litigious and that is why a legal duty is placed upon the trust to contain an express irrevocability clause failing which no registration can be granted. In the absence of a specific and express clause in the instrument of MARCH 09, 2026 S.R.JOSHI 1-wpl-7587-2026.doc trust affirming the irrevocable nature of the Trust, satisfaction cannot be formed by the authority granting registration."