The Delhi income tax (I-T) department is facing criticism for its administrative inefficiency by failing to produce 95.4 per cent of records asked by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for its performance audit for financial year 2009-10. This is the highest failure rate of I-T department in providing records to the CAG. Delhi is followed by Punjab (53.4 per cent), Orissa (50.9 per cent), Uttarakhand (47.7 per cent), Maharashtra (46.3 per cent) and Gujarat (39.9 per cent).
Chandigarh (UT), Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala — have emerged as the best states by providing 100 per cent records to the CAG.
A CAG report has revealed that against 8,873 records requisitioned by the CAG for auditing, Delhi’s I-T department produced only 410. “Non-production of records despite repeated requests was a serious constraint as well as a matter of concern,” the report observes.
This comes as a blow to the department’s credibility, after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s recent remark on I-T department being the largest litigant in the government of India.
“In future, the CAG will look into this performance aspect and work to find out the reasons of department’s inability to produce records,” said Anupam Kulshreshtha, deputy Comptroller & Auditor General.
It is high time that the major work of the Department is to be outsourced to save its records; the largest litigant will loose its csaes and money to a greater extent if this trend continues.