BENGALURU: The Income Tax Department - Karnataka and Goa region, on Thursday, defended DGIT (Investigation), Balakrishna B R, following allegations from Congress that he was ‘threatening raids’ on the party leaders ‘to relinquish their existing political affiliations in favour of BJP’.
Addressing a press meet, Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Rajnish Kumar said the Income Tax Department has received a memorandum regarding the issue from Congress leaders. “We will forward it to the chairman of Income Tax department,” he said.
To a question, he said that I-T department cannot stop people from making allegations. “However, even if there are raids and searches, they can be subjected to scrutiny by the courts. If some person has suspicion about a raid, he can file a writ petition in court contesting it. But not a single writ petition has been filed against the searches conducted by the Department,” he said.He said that allegations of bias by Congress was just their perception as the I-T department is not a political set-up.
Protest and why
Several Congress members protested in front of the IT office on Queen’s Road. They raised allegations against Balakrishna for the second time in a week.
In a memorandum to the Department, Congress alleged that the I-T Department was being used to hound partymen. The memorandum states, “The most unfortunate however, has been reports of one Mr Balakrishna B R, DG IT (Inv) threatening raids on those not willing to make concessions or yield to the pressure of relinquishing their political affiliations in favour of BJP.” Balakrishna was named in a recent complaint by Congress to ECI. The party had urged the Commission to transfer the official.