Scandal Exposed At Information Collection Centres

Punjab Excise and Taxation section has exposed a scam at the barriers (Information Collection Centres), in which a few of the assessors and data entry operators were conniving with the traders to modify the worth or the nature of the product that had crossed the barrier.

Stating this, excise and taxation commissioner Anurag Verma stated that on a grievance, a research was got carried out by asstt excise and taxation commissioner SS Bangra.

On inspection of the PC record, it was detected that on June 2012, an entry about vehicle No PB-10-BF-8655 containing hosiery goods valued around Rs. 2.59 lakh was made at ICC, Ludhiana Railway Station.

Pawan Sood, the inspector doing a shift, forwarded the hosiery goods but did not lastly make the entry into the PC record. Rather, he kept the entry pending and then, he altered the commodity from the list to knitted cloth around Rs. 1.46 lakh.

Hosiery goods are chargeable at the price of 6.05% while knitted cloth is free of all taxes.

On further inspection of record, it was detected that this inspector was accustomed to indulging in such practice and over a period of past 3 months, he had changed approximately thirty such entries, which amounted to around Rs. 1.10 crore.

After this probe, Sood has been positioned under suspension.

Another such examiner Naresh Kumar, who had also been detected to be indulging in related misconduct, has been shunted out from ICC, Shamboo (Export) to Gurdaspur.

Verma stated that the section had engaged paper approval executives with the intention to help the taxation personnel at the barriers. Twelve such paper clearance executives were detected to be indulging in such misconduct by Bangra.

On October 10, 2012, a truck passed ICC, Khanauri and an entry was made in the computer that auto parts worth about Rs. 14.60 lakh were loaded in it. But on October 12, 2012, Ajay Kumar, document clearance executive changed the nature of commodity from auto parts to waste yarn and reduced the amount to 1.8 lakh. Autoparts are taxable at the rate of 14.30 per cent and waste yarn is chargeable at the rate of 6.05%.

Verma added Bangra’s interrogation has disclosed that over past 3 months, entries around Rs. 40 crore have been altered.

He added that he has taken a very grave view of the issue and aside from debarring the Inspectors, the services of these 12 paper approval executives have been allotted with.

He has asked addl excise and taxation commissioner SDS Dhillon to look at the option of lodging an FIR in the matter against the examiners, paper authorization executives and most especially the dealers who were the beneficiary of this misconduct.