New Delhi: The Income Tax Department assured the Supreme Court on Monday that it will not take any coercive steps to recover approximately Rs 3,500 demanded from the Indian National Congress before the end of Lok Sabha elections 2024.
“Please record my statement that till the matter is heard next…whenever, we will not take any coercive steps…We will not take any coercive steps till the elections are over”, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the I-T Department, told a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih.
The Supreme Court was hearing the appeals filed by the Congress challenging the demands made by the I-T Department. The court recorded the I-T Department’s assurance and posted the matter for the next hearing on July 24.
The bench also said in its order that “it is needless to observe that the concession made by the SG with respect to demand is without prejudice to all rights and contentions that it may have against the plaintiff herein” and that “the…demand of approximately Rs 3500 cr is not strictly relatable to the controversy in these appeals and touch upon other demands which arise against the plaintiff”
Appearing for the Congress, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi pointed out that the main civil appeal, which is pending, concerns demands regarding the 1994-95 assessment year pursuant to a 2007 notice.
He said that the department had already “collected Rs 135 crores by way of attachment of properties. Singhvi said that “we are not a profit-making organisation and only a political party …Our case is gross receipt is not taxable”.
Mehta said the Rs 1,700 crore demand raised in 2021 was based on parameters laid down in a 2016 judgment.
Just weeks before the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2024 begins, the Congress on Saturday said it received fresh notices from the I-T Department for the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17, raising demands of Rs 1,745 crore. This, together with the notices for assessment years 1994-95 and 2017-18 to 2020-21, brought the total demand to Rs 3,567 crores.
In response to the notices, the Congress hit out at the BJP-led central government accusing it of indulging in “tax terrorism” to “financially cripple” it ahead of Lok Sabha elections.
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