GUWAHATI: The Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation), North East Region has till Thursday afternoon seized Rs 4.42 crore cash in the region under Income Tax laws.
This includes the highest ever one-time seizure of Rs 1.80 crore by flying squads at Pasighat on Tuesday night just hours before a public rally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi there.
The amount was reportedly recovered from two parked vehicles on the premises of a guest house in the East Siang headquarters under Arunachal East Lok Sabha seat and claimed to be of a former MLA.
“Another sum of Rs 66lakh was seized by election expenditure monitoring teams in Nagaon on Wednesday. Another seizure might take place in Sivasagar as well, the details of which are not known,” an Income Tax (Investigation) directorate official told The Shillong Times on Thursday evening.
The seizures, made since the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, come in the wake of the directive of the Election Commission of India (ECI) on election expenditure monitoring.
ECI has requisitioned services of the directorate under Article 324 of the Constitution of India for effective election expenditure monitoring, “to curb the use of black money in elections”.
Since the date of notification of the General Elections, over 150 officials have been deployed across Northeast to monitor 112 districts and 12 airports.
In an offical statement here, Sanjay Bahadur, principal director of Income Tax (Investigation), North East Region, praised CRPF and BSF who have also contributed to interception of cash that resulted in seizures.
Synergy meet
A “Synergy meeting” of 24 central and state agencies and banks to harness their combined institutional and human intelligence for strengthening of election expenditure monitoring exercise of ECI, was held here on Thursday.
This is first of its kind meeting by the directorate to emphasise and explore the potential of informal joint efforts to contribute to free and fair elections by creating a multi-layered deterrence to use of black money during elections.
Participants included senior officials of police, CISF, CRPF, BSF, NIA, IB, DRI, ED, NCB, RBI, Railways, Airport Authority, Customs and leading banks.
The meeting was jointly conducted by Sanjay Bahadur, Principal Director of Investigation, North East Region and Mukesh Agarwal, Additional Director General Police, Assam.
Detailed discussions were held on ways in which all agencies can pool in effort and information to enable quicker reaction by flying squads of state authorities and surveillance teams of Income Tax whenever suspicious cash above Rs. 10 lakh is mobilised.
Directorate officers gave several suggestions to banks, CISF, Airport Authority and Railways to intensify monitoring and real-time reporting of high-value suspicious cash movement.
The directorate felt a strong need for such inter-agency synergy in the wake of a large number of suspicious cash deposits and withdrawals taking place in banking space which had so far gone unreported.
