The Communist Party of India has been served a notice by the Income Tax Department for procedural violations after two of its state units were found to be using old Permanent Account Number, or PAN, cards to file their income tax returns, ANI reported on Saturday citing the party’s general secretary D Raja.
Raja did not, however, specify the dates on which the notices were received by his party.
On being asked if the party has received any notices regarding a tax demand, Raja said that they had not received such a notice from the Income Tax Department.
Media reports on Friday suggested that the Communist Party of India had been asked to pay dues worth Rs 11 crore for the PAN card violation.
Raja’s confirmation of the notice to the Communist Party of India comes a day after the Income Tax Department served a fresh notice of Rs 1,823 crore to the Congress a day after the Delhi High Court rejected the party’s petitions challenging the tax reassessment proceedings for the financial years 2017-’18 to 2020-’21.
On Saturday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh claimed that the party received two more notices on Friday night, reported The Times of India, though their contents were not specified.
The Congress has said that it will hold nationwide protests against the Income Tax Department’s action against it. The Opposition party said that the ruling BJP is thwarting Indian democracy by illegally freezing the bank accounts of the Congress ahead of the general elections.
Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal on Friday directed all state units of the party to organise protests at the state and district level from Saturday.
“Eight years of Income Tax returns of the INC have been reopened on baseless, manufactured grounds to levy patently illegal Income Tax demand orders totalling thousands of crores of rupees,” Venugopal wrote in a letter to party workers. “This is nothing but a blatant and naked attack on the very principals of democracy.”
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