Peculiar situation arises-war of allegations-counter allegations begin in Punjab Excise department
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in
The Principal Secretary, Home Affairs and Justice, and for Excise Commissier Anurag Verma today strongly refuted as baseless the allegations leveled by Deputy Excise and Taxation Commissioner Y.S. Matta . He said that Matta himself remained in charge of 5 districts as Joint Director (Investigation) Bathinda and another 5 districts as DETC, Amritsar. Had there been some tax evasion, why didn’t he himself detect a single case in these 10 districts out this data.
Whatever information was given by Matta to the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), discrepancies in only 3 cases were detected by the EIU. As ETC , I gave instructions for taking strict action in these cases. However, when these 3 dealers were confronted with these discrepancies, they produced their books of account showing that they had fully reflected the imports in their books. Hence, the Taxation officers concerned concluded that no tax evasion had been made.
Divulging further, Verma said that as per the EIU report submitted to him, quality of data brought by Maata was very poor and it included data mostly of tax compliant firms / entities like The Tribune Trust, Hind Samachar group ,Daily Ajit, Vardhman , Hero Cycles etc.
Disclosing further , Verma said they the department had undertaken a massive exercise of verification of the data provided by Matta and had found that out of Rs 44,000 cr goods worth Rs. 43,900 crores had been duly recorded by dealers in their books. Only discrepancy of Rs. 95 crores with maximum possible Tax liability of Rs. 5 crores was left , which was under verification. Excise & Taxation Department has filed an affidavit in the Court stating these facts and saying that Matta has wasted the time of the Department and should be burdened with exemplary costs . Sworn Affidavits filed by the Department & me are shared below. After these affidavits were filed , Matta is running away from arguments and has taken 2 adjournments.
Peculiar situation arises-war of allegations-counter allegations begin in Punjab Excise department. Excise Department has also stated in its affidavit that Importers get Cenvat credit of Import duty and so had no incentive to keep these imports out of their books.
It is noteworthy that Matta had in the past been awarded the punishment of CENSURE for consuming beer on duty which is in violation of the Rule 22 of The Punjab Government Employees (Conduct Rules), 1966.
Verma said that he is contemplating initiating legal action against those levelling false allegations him and defaming him.
July 2,2022
