A Taxing Job Well Done

SHE is barely four-and-half feet. Yet, she stands tall, towering over a society where courage and honesty are in short supply. She is Rekha ...

SHE is barely four-and-half feet. Yet, she stands tall, towering over a society where courage and honesty are in short supply. She is Rekha Chondekar, Assistant Commissioner of Sales Tax in Nagpur, who has given several tax defaulters a run for their money — or rather for the department’s money.

Her day begins like any other housewife’s — getting up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast and pack lunch for her two school-going sons. But the parallel ends there. Chondekar cycles to office and back to keep fit. And in the course of the day, she courts threats and battles pressure from all quarters as she takes on tax defaulters.

Chondekar shot into prominence when she brought down the empire of Laxmikant Gupta, a liquor baron who was allegedly the single biggest tax evader in Nagpur division.

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Recently, prosecution powers in the Bombay Sales Tax Act were enforced for the first time in Vidarbha when Gupta’s palatial bungalow and other properties were bought by the department for just Re 1. The reason: Gupta’s tax evasion, adding up to a whopping Rs 2.12 crore.

The story began in May last year when Chondekar refused to issue a clearance certificate to Gupta, who needed to submit it to the Excise Department to renew the manufacturing licence of his Somras Distillery. However, Gupta managed to secure the required clearance by issuing post-dated cheques, thanks to his friends in high places, despite Chondekar’s stand that it would set a wrong precedent. The cheques bounced and the distillery shut down.

But three months later, it was reopened after Gupta filed an affidavit with the Excise Department, in the presence of Excise Minister Anil Deshmukh, that he would pay all his dues in six months. In practice, he continued defaulting his tax payments.

So Chondekar moved High Court, which paved the way for the auction of Gupta’s palatial bungalow as well as his distillery. Even while the property was being auctioned, Gupta threatened to kill himself and his family. Chondekar asked her officers to call the police and have an offence registered. The ploy worked, Gupta apologised.

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Chondekar’s achievements don’t end with that. There’s the time when she made a computer UPS battery dealer cough up Rs 36 lakh for tax evasion. Threats to life are commonplace in her line of duty. But she carries on, undeterred. ‘‘I simply speak the truth,’’ she says.

Belonging to Yerkheda village in Nagpur district, where most people are barely matriculates, Chondekar passed the PSC exam in 1987. After working as a BDO, she passed another exam in 1993 and became a sales tax officer. Marriage only brought her support in her husband, a range forest officer, and sons.

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