I-T officers, staff resort to agitation

Tribune News Service

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Ludhiana, October 16

Two major associations of the Income Tax Department employees — the Income Tax Gazetted Officers’ Association (ITGOA) and the Income Tax Employees Federation (ITEF) — under the ageis of the Joint Council of Action (JCA) are on the path of agitation against the Central Board for Direct Taxes (CBDT) for fulfillment of their service-related demands.

The two associations represent about 97 per cent of the department’s workforce. Income tax officers, along with members of Groups ‘B’ and ‘C’, had decided against participating in survey and search operations from October 15.

The government has set a tax collection target of Rs 7.98 lakh crore for the Income Tax Department for the current financial year, which is unlikely to be met due to the agitation by the staff.

JCA spokesperson Rajiv Puri said their major demands were promotions of income tax officers (ITOs) to the posts of assistant commissioner of income tax (ACIT) as there was a huge stagnation in the ITO cadre, filling of vacant posts, regularising all casual/daily wage workers and finalising the recruitment rules of Group B and C officials immediately. These demands were pending with the CBDT for the past two years, which forced them to take the path of protest, he added.

The CBDT had made a promise to the government that one crore new assesses would be added this year. At the same time, there are a huge number of vacancies of the ground-level workforce of the department. The cadre review of the Income Tax Department was held last year and almost 20,000 new posts were created. But most of these posts have not been filled till date. This has led to a severe shortage of staff in the department. Due to cadre-restructuring, the department has become “top heavy” with ample promotion opportunities for senior officers in the supervisory roles. However, there were very few promotion avenues for 97 per cent of the workforce.

The JCA decided to intensify its agitation from today and took a call against conducting or taking part in search and survey operations, including TDS survey, recovery survey. The staff will also not attend review meetings with higher authorities or attend/assist in conducting video conference of the CBDT.

Meanwhile, employees will hold a day-long dharna in front of the residence of the CBDT Chairperson in New Delhi on October 28. It was further decided that from November 1, no tax recovery work would be undertaken until the demands were met.