Ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the Congress\u2019 financial woes worsened once again with the Income Tax Department issuing a fresh Rs 1,700 crore notice. The tax department issued the notice due to discrepancies in tax returns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fresh notice is for assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21 and includes penalty and interest. This comes a day after the Delhi High Court dismissed the party\u2019s petition challenging the tax notices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The opposition party is already facing a funds crunch after Income Tax authorities imposed a penalty of Rs 200 crore and froze its funds. Furthermore, the party has not received any relief from the High Court in the case and is likely to approach the Supreme Court. The Congress has accused the BJP of squeezing it financially and of using tax authorities against it ahead of Lok Sabha elections beginning April 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressing a press conference, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that the notices are being sent to cripple the party financially. Calling the action as tax terrorism, Jairam Ramesh said that this attack on Congress has to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier in February, the Income Tax department had found fault in the party’s tax returns and demanded Rs 200 crore. Subsequently, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) had asked the party to pay the dues and froze their accounts. The Congress stated the tax tribunal’s order freezing its funds was an attack on democracy as the order came just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AICC general secretary K C Venugopal stated that this is a deliberate attempt by the Narendra Modi-led to bankrupt the Congress ahead of elections. He mentioned that the timing of the penalty notice, following the Delhi High Court’s dismissal of Congress petitions challenging tax reassessment proceedings, reeks of political vendetta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He underlined that while political parties are typically exempt from taxes, this penalty is allegedly due to delayed filing of returns. He asserted that it is a blatant move by the Modi government to cripple the Congress financially, especially during the elections. He further asserted that in response to the notice, the Congress plans to stage a nationwide protest, condemning BJP’s exploitation of central agencies to target opposition parties. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Congress has accused the BJP of squeezing it financially and of using tax authorities against it ahead of Lok Sabha elections beginning April 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":506531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,4,125714],"tags":[86,111,526,162422,28950],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2024\/03\/29135945\/364586-newindianexpress2024-02ba9072d2-b6d3-450c-bcb3-3cca7c183856congpressconference-1.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506529"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=506529"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=506529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}