I-T seizes Rs 31 cr 'unaccounted money' in poll season

Taking part in Election Commission’s drive to check the use of black money in the elections, the Income tax department has seized a total of Rs 31.39 crore “unaccounted money” in cash from all the poll-bound states during the election process.

According to the Income tax (I-T) department, maximum cash--- Rs 18.97 crore was detected from the from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. It has also seized Rs 10.88 crore from West Bengal and Assam, and Rs 1.54 crore from Kerala.

“We have carried out the seizure in cases where the person concerned failed to give satisfactory explanation about source and purpose of the cash,” said Anjani Kumar who has been designated as nodal officer to monitor cash movement in the assembly elections.

Income Tax department carried out this exercise of keeping a tab on the movement of cash in all the poll-bound states on the directive of Election Commission (EC).

“We were asked to keep a vigil on the cash movements in these states by the Election Commission. We started the monitoring work the day EC issued the press note on election and continued the work till the last date of polling,” Kumar said. Earlier, the expenditure-monitoring wing of EC only used to do this surveillance job. But, EC roped in I-T department to work for it since Bihar assembly election last year.

The seized amount of money is presently kept with the I-T department only and further investigation will be carried out to take a call on this.“During this process we worked under the provision of I-T acts only. Only our objective was different here. We did not look for high-end revenue only in this cases. If there was a cash movement of small amount and for that the concerned person failed to furnish proof of it being part of the disclosed money, we seized the amount. This is prima facie unaccounted money. Whether there is any tax-demand or not will be clear only after further investigation,” he said.Special arrangements were made by the the EC in all the districts of the sates to perform the exercise.