I-T Dept: Digitisation needs manpower to process data

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Consider this example by the Board: the department received 40 lakh pieces of information involving Rs 106 lakh crore in 2009-10 of suspected unreported income in the returns.

Of these,30 per cent cases did not have valid PAN,making the required follow up impossible due to paucity of manpower.

Further,of the total 5.07 crore pending returns till March 31,2011,only 7.8 lakh returns were in the category of scrutiny and only 4.47 lakh cases were disposed during the year,making up for less than one per cent of the returns.

The rest 99 per cent of the returns were accepted without scrutiny due to shortage of manpower. So though the tax base had increased over the years,there has been a short fall in core areas of investigation,the department has claimed.

As on March 31,2012,the income tax department was working with around 70 per cent officers against the sanctioned strength. The sanctioned strength of the officers and staff in the department stood at 57,793 of which the working strength was 40,756,a shortfall of 29.47 per cent.

Particularly,the investigation directorates,intelligence and criminal investigation and directorate and central charges of the department are facing acute workforce shortage,according to the department.

“Though computerisation is an effective tool to rationalise the work load,it is incorrect to assume that it has resulted in less workload for the department. Contrary to the belief,while enhancing the effectiveness of the department,it has actually increased the workload,” the board has told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance.

The income tax department started the computerisation drive a few years back,and established a centralised processing cell (CPC) in Bangalore in 2009 for processing e-filed returns.

Later CPC-TDS was also inaugurated in February this year at Ghaziabad to process the e-filed returns to help the tax deducted at source (TDS) wing to focus on work than processing returns.

Though,the board said,these steps have helped it in using the manpower more effectively,the huge shortage of manpower offsets the benefits.

Recently,a group of ministers comprising finance minister P Chidambaram,home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde,environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and minister of personnel V Narayanasamy,cleared cadre restructuring of the department,allowing it to launch a recruitment drive to hire around 19,000 revenue officials across the country in the next few of years.