Congress' ₹1,800 crore income tax department notice: 'Received two more notices later,' says party

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₹1,800 crore notice. According to an India Today report, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, "Two more notices were sent to us last night". He reiterated that Congress was a target of "tax terrorism".

The party claimed that the I-T department slapped a notice, asking them to pay around ₹1,823 crore on Friday. According to Congress leaders, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also accused of "serious violation" for which it should be penalised to the tune of ₹4,600 crore. However, the income tax sleuths are only targeting the opposition, the Congress alleged.

‘Modi govt want to strangulate opposition financially’, Congress attacks BJP The left parties - CPI and CPI-M - were also caught up in similar tax nets with the CPI saying it had received a notice from the Income Tax department for using an old PAN card. The I-T department has sent a tax recovery notice of ₹15.59 crore to the left parties for not declaring a bank account in its tax returns for 2016-17. Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale also claimed he has received 11 I-T notices in the last 72 hours.

With elections around the corner, Congress accused the BJP-led Centre of misusing institutions like the income-tax department, ED, and CBI to subvert democracy. Congress slapped with ₹1,700 crore demand notice by I-T dept Congress party President Mallikarjun Kharge asked the Centre why was it using the income tax department as a weapon to harass the principal opposition party. Kharge said a penalty of ₹54 crore has been imposed by the I-T authorities for the year 1993-94, ₹182 crore for 2016-17, ₹179 crore for 2017-18, ₹918 crore for 2018-19 and ₹480 crore for 2019-20.