Income Taxes Training centre set for expansion

The Direct Taxes Regional Training Institute, Bangalore (DTRTI), the training arm of the Income-tax Department, is embarking on an expansion plan to meet the growing demands for manpower training.

With the growing stature of the DTRTI and increased number of trainees and courses each year, a new campus built for Rs 30 crore has been commissioned. Spread across 125,000 square feet of built up area, the new centre can provide residential facility for 110 trainees.

The centre functions under the aegis of National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur. DTRTI had its origins in 1973 in Bangalore. The original jurisdiction of DTRTI spanned South India, covering Karnataka, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. After the creation of a training centre in Chennai, the jurisdiction is now restricted to the first three states where its training base numbers about 4,000 department personnel. However, for its specialised courses, the jurisdiction extends the whole country. Two units for training the ministerial staff, one each at Bangalore and Hyderabad, are part of the DTRTI. During its existence of about 38 years, DTRTI has so far trained nearly 60,000 officials of the department.

The institute also caters to the direct taxation-related training needs of other government departments, banks, corporates among others. A new and increasing trend is the training of tax administrators of other countries, especially from the developing world.

The expertise of the faculty is also being sought by other training institutes, law schools, banks and industry.

According to a statement from the institute, the campus at Jalahalli in Bangalore is a model project of the Ministry of Finance in terms of technology incorporation for training, communication, security, comfort as well as environmental sensitivity.

The statement further added that the culture at this centre is a conscious attempt to break the hierarchical mindset which stifles innovation and creativity in governance.

All the facilities in the campus are equally available to all while disciplinary and training norms are uniformly applied. With opening of the new centre, the training sector of the Income-Tax Department has matched steps through constant re-skilling, value additions and capability build ups. A sprawling global training centre to advance the cause of research and academic exercises in direct taxation is now proposed at Bangalore adjacent to the DTRTI campus in Jalahalli.