Congress Accounts Blocked; A Sad Day for Democracy: Ajay Maken; IT Department Says Delayed in Filing Returns
Image Source: Dawn
A day after the electoral bonds were declared unconstitutional, the biggest opposition party faced an obstruction today when both of their accounts (including the youth congress account) were seized over the allegations of a 45-day delay in filing returns in the FY 2018-19. The department has also demanded 210 cr as a penalty. Speaking on the account freeze, Congress Spokesperson & party treasurer Ajay Maken said, “When the principal opposition’s party accounts have been frozen just 2 weeks before the announcement of national elections, do you think democracy is alive in our country?” calling it an action of attempting to push the opposition out of the picture right when elections are around the corner.
Although the accounts are operational now until the next hearing, Maken also said they have approached the tax tribunal and called the act dubious and an “extreme measure”, saying there have been past cases similar to this where such action was not taken.
Expressing further grievances, Maken said, “IT department & IT appellate tribunal have said that we have to ensure that 115 cr. have to be kept in the banks. This 115 cr. is the lien marked in the accounts. We can spend an amount over and above that. This means that 115 cr. have been frozen. This 115 cr. is much more than we have in our Current accounts,” meaning the amount should be unfazed with consonance with the tax authorities.
He also added that the funds in question were collected from crowd-funding & membership drives and are not corporate bond money, saying because a majority of the money spent on elections came in cash by our MPs & MLAs we are being subjected to this fine and restriction, that too after 5 years.
Speaking on the incident, Rahul Gandhi in a post on X said, “Don’t worry Modi ji, Congress is not governed by the power of money but by the power of people. We have never bowed down before dictatorship, nor will we ever bow down. Every Congress worker will fight tooth & nail to protect India’s democracy” (the original post was in Hindi).
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