Corruption charges force 22 senior tax officers into retirement

NEW DELHI: According to the sources, around 22 senior tax officers have been forced into retirement due to their alleged roles in corruption cases and links with other charges.

This took place days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told a newspaper that the centre was aware of "some black sheep in the tax administration".

On Independence Day, PM Modi said in his address to the nation and also in an interview this month, "Some black sheep in the tax administration may have misused their powers and harassed taxpayers, either by targeting honest assesses or by taking excessive action for minor or procedural violations. We have recently taken the bold step of compulsorily retiring a significant number of tax officials, and we will not tolerate this type of behaviour."

The names of the 22 tax officers who have been forced into retirement are: KK Uikey, SR Parate, Kailash Verma, KC Mandal, MS Damor, RS Gogiya, Kishore Patel, JC Solanki, SK Mandal, Govind Ram Malviya, AU Chhapargare, S Asokaraj, Deepak M Ganeyan, Pramod Kumar, Mukesh Jain, Navneet Goyal, Achintya Kumar Pramanicik, VK Singh, DR Chaturvedi, D Ashok, Leela Mohan Singh and VP Singh.

The officers belong to tax units of cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Meerut and Chennai.