The Delhi High Court on Friday rejected the petitions of the Congress Party challenging the tax reassessment proceedings. The bench of Justices Yashwant Verma and Purushendra Kumar Kaurav, while rejecting the writ petitions, said that there is no justification in filing such petitions just a few days before the completion of the tax reassessment proceedings. The Congress party had filed petitions against the ongoing tax reassessment proceedings for 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. The High Court said that the Income Tax Department has collected enough, solid evidence against the Congress Party on the basis of which there is a need to re-examine the income of the party. Documents recovered from Megha Engineering Group during the search indicate that money was transferred to Congress but it was not reflected in the account. The High Court also said that unaccounted transactions have been detected regarding the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2018 and 2013 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections and the satisfaction note given by the Assessing Officer also includes signed receipts of the money given to the candidates. Are. This note contains details of payments made to MPs, MLAs and candidates. It is also written in this note that money has been given to Congress by government departments and corporations, liquor manufacturers, many industrial companies and individuals.
You will remember, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had held a joint press conference on Thursday in which they together attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of destroying democracy. Rahul Gandhi had even said that the opposition parties in the country are being harassed, they are being prevented from contesting elections, the bank accounts of the Congress Party are being frozen and the courts, Election Commission and media are silent, something or the other. Does not speak. Rahul said that democracy has ended in the country, jokes are being made in the name of democracy.
It is important to understand tax in this whole matter. The first thing is that not a single bank account of Congress was frozen. Congress Party has more than 100 accounts across the country in which crores of rupees are deposited in different places. Out of these, Income Tax has recovered its outstanding money from 11 accounts of five banks of Delhi. These 11 accounts were also not frozen. According to income tax rules, political parties get exemption, but there are four conditions for it. If these are not followed then no tax exemption is available. There is a condition in this that it is necessary to file the return by the prescribed date, earlier in 2018 the date of return filing was till September 2018. After this, the Income Tax Board extended this time to 31 December 2018, yet Congress did not file the return. By the time I filed, the deadline had passed and that date was February 2019. The second condition to be followed is that a political party cannot take more than Rs 2000 in cash from any one source, but Rs 14 lakh was deposited in the Congress accounts and shown. Therefore, the condition of exemption was violated and all this money became taxable. Even if 20% of it had been deposited and a case had been filed for the remaining amount, there would have been no need to seize the money from the accounts for income tax purposes.
Secondly, sources say that when Income Tax raids took place at Kamal Nath’s place and Megha Engineering’s place, many of their links were found with the accounts of the Congress Party. That is why re-assessment was ordered. Income tax experts say that when this assessment comes, the amount of income tax for Congress can be huge. The third thing is regarding the tax of 31 years ago. Information received regarding this was that the Accounts Department of the Congress Party did not pay any attention in paying tax on this money and this tax along with interest increased to Rs 53 crore. Notice has been sent for this also. Therefore, it is wrong to say that the government wants to stop Congress from contesting elections. (Rajat Sharma)
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