Poll-time cash seizure of Rs 8 crore in Northeast breaks all previous records

The Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation), North East Region (NER) has made cash seizure exceeding Rs 8 crore till 22nd April in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. With this the Income Tax department claims to have broken all previous records of cash seizures made during general elections in the North East.

According to the Income Tax department, cash seizures of Rs. 1.21 crore was made during Election Expenditure Monitoring for 2014 elections.

"Directorate of Income Tax Investigation, NER has exceeded all previous records of cash seizures made during general elections in the North East. For the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, the last polling date in North East is 23rd April. The Directorate has made cash seizure exceeding Rs 8 crores till 22nd April, which is nearly 7 times the previous haul. This amount compares favourably even with many other jurisdictions, which have much higher tax revenue base than North East.

Principal Director of Income Tax Investigation for NER, Sanjay Bahadur has attributed this phenomenal outcome to timely preparation for the polls and identification of expenditure sensitive locations in consultation with state authorities and police. He also attributed the success to gathering of ground intelligence by Directorate investigators.

"The limited manpower of about 150 officials was strategically deployed to set up an extensive network of Surveillance Units to cover 112 districts and in 12 Air Intelligence Units (AIUs) for interception of unexplained cash," informed the department.

The department informed that a Special Task Force jointly headed by Subhrajyoti Bhattacharjee, Additional Director & Nodal Officer and Mrinal Das, Joint Director heading AIUs has also been constituted on 22nd April to investigate thousands of suspicious high-value cash deposits and withdrawals in 68 banks operating in North East.