April 25: Over 50 summons have been issued to the income-tax officials by the income-tax ombudsman in the last one year for failing to address grievances of petitioners. The office of the I-T ombudsman, which has the entire state under its jurisdiction, receives between 25 to 30 grievances every month and has redressed over 250 grievances in the last year. However, the actual number of grievances is estimated to be over 2,000 a year.
The role of the ombudsman, who functions as an independent authority, is to enquire into grievances or complaints against a public authority. The summons for hearing is issued by an ombudsman after a month of sending a notice to the concerned officer to send a status report. When an officer fails to respond to a grievance represented by a petitioner for over a month, the officer is asked to report the status to the ombudsman within a stipulated time frame. A summons is only issued when a status report is not sent.
The I-T ombudsman was appointed for the first time in 2008 and since then over 100 summons to I-T officers have been issued, but not a single case of penalty or fine has been levied on officers as most have complied to summons and responded quickly. “Once a petition is accepted by the I-T ombudsman’s office following a thorough assessment, the case is solved within a month’s time but due to lack of awareness among the public, many people do not represent their grievances,” tax assistant at the I-T ombudsman’s office, Mr N. Panchakaran, said. However, the number of petitions have increased from 5-10 per month from when the concept of ombudsman was introduced in the department to the present 25-30 petitions.
Grievances related to delays in disposal or settlement of claims connected with issue of refunds, interest waiver petitions, appeals effects, rectification applications, release of seized books of accounts and assets, allotment and issue of Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards are addressed by the ombudsman.
