No coercive action on Congress till Lok Sabha polls, income tax dept tells SC over Rs 3,500-cr notice

The Income Tax department on Monday told the Supreme Court that it won't take any coercive action against Congress for tax demand notices of Rs 3,500 crore in view of Lok Sabha polls.

The Congress Saturday said it had received fresh notices for the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17 raising demands of Rs 1,745 crore. 

This together with the notice for assessment years 1994-95 and 2017-18 to 2020-21 took the total demand to Rs 3,567 crore.

The fresh notices were received Friday evening, hours after the party hit out at the BJP-led Central government accusing it of indulging in “tax terrorism” to “financially cripple” it ahead of Lok Sabha elections.

The string of notices follow the I-T department’s raids prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections where it claimed to have traced “unaccounted transactions” of Rs 523.87 crore.

On March 22, the party had lost in the Delhi High Court a challenge to the search operations conducted by the I-T department. The party had argued that these were “time-barred” and a “delayed action”.

Also in March this year, the Congress party lost its appeal before the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) where it had sought a stay on withdrawal of Rs 135 crore from its bank accounts.

The Congress said it would stage a nationwide protest against the tax notices. "Eight years of Income Tax returns of the Indian National Congress [INC] have been reopened on baseless, manufactured grounds to levy patently illegal Income Tax demand orders totaling thousands of crores of rupees. This is nothing but a blatant and naked attack on the very principle of democracy," wrote the Congress in an official statement.