Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.) & CBI is exempted from the purview of RTI Act

Sri K M Chandrasekhar is top senior bureaucrats, is not in favour of Citizenry’s Fundamental Rights to Information guaranteed under Article 19(1) of the Constitution. In his letter when Revenue Secretary through Memo Letter No. D.O.F.No.296/63/2006-IT(Inv.II) dated 22nd March, 2006, addressed to Sri Satyananda Mishra the then Secretary, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (now the CIC of Central Information Commission), to exempt the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.), from RTI Act, 2005, which was approved by our ‘Honest’ Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, ignoring the solid grounds of strong objections against such exemption raised by the Department of personnel and Training. Simple reason behind such exemption was to protect the Big but Powerful Tax Evaders. Otherwise, recommendations made by the then Revenue Secretary Sri K M Chandrasekhar holds coveted post Cabinet Secretary stating interalia that the “Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.) are conferred with powers of search and seizure and otherwise carry out enquiries which are sensitive and secret in nature. Independent enquiries are made from various sources and identity of these sources has to be safeguarded. The Directorate also share and receive information from other intelligence / investigative agencies which are otherwise placed in the Second Schedule of the RTI Act. The information received from these agencies by the Investigation Wings would also be open to public unless these Directorates are exempted from disclosing such information.”, was without due diligence of administrative considerations. Otherwise, during the period of investigation, disclosure of information is already exempted under Section 8(1) of the RTI Act. The disclosure of the Information collected by the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.) from other intelligence / investigative agencies which are covered under the Second Schedule of the RTI Act, could have been treated as third party information. In such a scenario exemption of the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.) from the RTI Act is constitutionally and legally void and unwarranted.

Now, taking advantage of such exemption, and ignoring the proviso provided under Section 24 of the RTI Act (Provision with regard to Second Schedule) that ‘information pertaining to the allegations of corruption shall not be excluded’ from disclosure, the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.), is denying the information pertaining to matter relating to the allegation of corruption, just to protect the Big Tax Evaders like Kolkata Land Mafia Sanjay Kumar Jhunjhunwala. It is utterly surprising that even the CBDT and IT Department has been forwarding applications under RTI Act, to the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.) which are nowhere related to the Directorate General of Income Tax (Inv.), simply with the sole motto to hoodwink by avoiding the supply of the information for the benefit of Tax Evaders.

It is very clear that once CBI is exempted from the purview of RTI Act, no case of the related scam can ever be brought out on the surface in future.