The Income Tax department has issued a notice of Rs 1,823.08 crore to the Congress party, exacerbating its financial concerns ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, reported PTI quoting Ajay Maken on Friday.
The development comes after the Delhi High Court rejected the party’s plea challenging reassessment proceedings for four assessment years.
Maken called the I-T notice a premeditated, diabolical campaign against Congress. “I-T dept has launched premeditated, diabolical campaign against Congress by reopening matters of old returns on baseless grounds,” PTI quoted Maken as saying.
“We have received notices from the time of Sitaram Kesari, from 1993-94… We have been demanded to pay Rs 53 crores from the time of Sitaram Kesari. A total of Rs 1823 crores has been made by the IT department from Congress,” said Maken. He also called out BJP and said, “We have analysed all violations of the BJP using the same parameters they used to analyse our violations… BJP has a penalty of Rs 4600 crore. The income Tax department should raise a demand from the BJP for the payment of this amount.”
The new demand pertains to assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21 and includes penalties and interest. The Congress party now awaits reassessment for three other assessment years, expected to conclude by Sunday, the stipulated deadline, a TOI report said.
“We received the demand notice without assessment orders. The govt appeared keener to serve us with demand rather than issue us reasons for reassessment,” TOI quoted Vivek Tankha as saying. He further added, “this is how the main opposition party is being strangled financially, and that too during the Lok Sabha elections.”
Delhi HC rejects plea
The Delhi High Court, on Thursday, dismissed petitions filed by the Congress challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings spanning four years by tax authorities. Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, comprising the bench, stated that the pleas were rejected in line with their earlier decision to abstain from intervening in the reopening of reassessment for an additional year.
The subject matter of the case pertained to assessment years from 2017 to 2021.
In a previous petition dismissed the week before, the Congress party had contested the initiation of reassessment proceedings concerning assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.
The High Court dismissed the plea, citing that the tax authority had prima facie gathered “substantial and concrete” evidence warranting further scrutiny. The tax department alleged that approximately Rs 520 crore had evaded assessment during these three years.
Additionally, the department revealed that searches conducted on entities, including some purportedly linked to Karnataka deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar and a company in Surat, had uncovered cash transactions involving Congress. These transactions were cited as violations, disqualifying the party from tax exemption available to political parties.
In the absence of exemption, parties are treated as “association of persons” and are obligated to pay taxes on their reported income. Moreover, the cash transactions are included in their total income.
(With inputs from TOI)
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