Unaccounted money worth Rs 7.25 cr unearthed from veg merchants

Amid protests from vegetable merchants over tax raids, the Income Tax (I-T) Department has unearthed unaccounted money worth over Rs7 crore from Punjab-based wholesale vegetable merchants, an official said today.

The money was unearthed by the authorities during a survey conducted last week to check commodity hoarding in the wake of soaring onion prices.

“About Rs7.25 crore has been surrendered by (wholesale) vegetable merchants in Punjab during the survey operations conducted last week,” Income Tax (Investigation wing), Additional Director, BK Singh said here today.

The I-T sleuths unearthed a whopping Rs4.25 crore as undisclosed money from a single vegetable merchant in Amritsar while Rs1.25 crore from Ludhiana-based traders and Rs1.75 crore from Jalandhar based traders. The department is still investigating the records of wholesale traders to ascertain the mismatch between physical stocks of goods and stocks maintained in accounts books.

“It will take a little time before the final report (about the surveys) is out and it will throw light on what modus operandi was adopted by the vegetable traders for hoarding commodities,” sources said.

Department officials, however, asserted it was very difficult to completely control hoarding of agricultural products, they said survey operations do help in curbing tendency of hoarding among traders.

Income Tax department swooped down on vegetable merchants in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Faridabad and Jammu and Kashmir simultaneously on January 6. “The details regarding operations conducted in Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir and Faridabad is awaited,” official said. Expressing anguish over the Income Tax surveys, vegetable traders in Punjab had accused the I-T officials of harassing them by carrying out raids on them.

Significantly, despite IT survey operations, onion prices continued to rule high at Rs55- Rs60 per kg in Punjab and Chandigarh.