There are black sheep in Excise & Taxation Department who are delaying enquiries: Haryana Lokayukta
Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 30
Coming down heavily on the Excise and Taxation Department in a case of misuse of TIN number of one firm by another, Haryana Lokayukta Justice Nawal Kishore Agarwal (retd) has said there were “black sheep” in the department who were “delaying” enquiries.
A Sirsa resident had approached the Lokayukta in 2017 against M/s Pratham Industries for allegedly cheating the government of lakhs of rupees by using the TIN number of another firm – M/s Manish Marbles.
The Lokayukta asked ACS Excise and Taxation Department to enquire into the matter in February, 2019 but despite reminders no report was received.
On February 10 this year, a show-cause notice was issued to the ACS, Excise and Taxation, following which the enquiry report was received on March 6.
The Lokayukta observed that the enquiry report issued by the Joint Excise and Taxation Commissioner (Range), Hisar, and endorsed by Excise and Taxation Commissioner claimed that “the cases against M/s Pratham Industries had become time barred and M/s Manish Marbles is not involved in tax evasion matter”.
Justice Aggarwal said the department sent an action taken report exonerating assesses instead of the enquiry report which he had sought.
“The Excise and Taxation Department did not wait for the report of this Authority and in fact decided the matter at its own end,” he said.
He added that the matter at hand was how and in what manner the officers of the Excise and Taxation Department were ignoring evasion of tax and causing huge loss to the public exchequer. “Furthermore, if such matters are taken as an example then it will not be difficult to presume the quantum of loss to public exchequer due to evasion of tax in the entire state of Haryana.”
He said that it was “incumbent upon the officers to get some legal opinion, whether in such cases the rules of limitation apply or not, and whether or not any offence under law of the land has been committed by such tax evaders”.
“In such a case, failure of supervising machinery to detect such misdeeds, may be due to negligence or may be by any deliberate act of a particular public servant, is apparent on the face of the record..,” said the Lokayukta.
“In the aforesaid facts, situation of the case, there is no iota of doubt in my mind that there are some black sheep in the department, who delayed the enquiries and have not done their duties to detect such matters,” he added.
Justice Aggarwal has called for an enquiry into the case by the ACS, Excise and Taxation Department, and for taking stern action against erring officials if complainant’s allegations are correct.
He has also recommended forming an SIT for a special audit of tax evasion incidents in the entire Haryana state.
