Taxpayers' grievances: CBDT allots quota to top brass

In order to accord a high priority to issues related to taxpayer's grievances, CBDT has brought a new mechanism where top officers of the IT department have been alloted a specific quota of complaints to monitor and track, from their origin to successful resolution.
The new initiative has come after Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently held a meeting on the subject on March 23 under the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System portal where he expressed that "high-level monitoring of public grievances is necessary".
To follow the prime minister's instructions, a senior official said it has been ordered by the Central Board of Direct Taxes that all members of the Board and officers in the ranks of Principal Chief Commissioner and Principal Directors General will "personally examine" 10 grievances each, every week.

Similarly, all Chief Commissioners, Principal Commissioners and Commissioners of Income Tax will individually monitor 20 and 30 grievances respectively, every week.
The overall assessment and resolution status of the grievances compiled for a month will be forwarded to the CBDT by the first week of the succeeding month which will be subsequently sent to the Prime Ministers Office and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances for review, they said.
The official said the measure will not only ensure accountability in ensuring effective grievance redressal but will also give a clear and real-time picture of the subject.
CBDT has also recently created a new structure in the IT department to exclusively deal with taxpayers' grievances and complaints related to delay in issue of refunds, problems in filing tax returns among others.

This is the first time that the department is witnessing a re-designation of posts, from top to bottom, to include grievance redressal and taxpayer services as an essential charge of work, albeit, by using the existing manpower of the department.