With the I-T department facing a huge volume of black money cases post-demonetisation, two associations of its employees have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking adequate manpower and infrastructure facilities to probe instances of tax evasion running into “several crores” of rupees.
The two associations — Income Tax Employees Federation (ITEF) and the Income Tax Gazetted Officers’ Association (ITGOA) — represent almost 97 per cent of the workforce of the Income Tax department.
They said in a joint memorandum that they are feeling “demotivated due to shortage of manpower in lower cadres and huge stagnation in officers cadre right at this moment”.
The associations said they have written a communication in this regard to the Prime Minister on November 17 “suggesting several measures to effectively fight the battle against black money”.
The associations claimed that after the November 8 declaration by the government scrapping Rs 500/1000 notes, the demonetised currencies are “coming back into banking channels in much higher proportion than what was initially expected, indicating the hoarders of black money are trying to circumvent the process of demonetisation by resorting to illegitimate means”.
They said the lower rungs of the department are facing “almost 30-35 per cent of vacancies at cutting-edge positions” like Additional Commissioner of I-T and Deputy Commissioner of I-T, their junior ranks and others.
It has also flagged the issue of “severe space problems” being faced by Assessing Officers (AOs) as they have to take hearings in cases on a rotational basis. The associations also said in this time of e-governance, the “internet and intranet connectivity of the department stands very poor, thus hindering the e-governance as well as internet-based enquiries/assessments as well as knowledge sharing”.
The memorandum said the promotions in their ranks are “getting abnormally delayed due to flimsy bureaucratic hurdles, creating huge vacancy at several grades”.
