GUWAHATI: Income tax officials informed on Wednesday that they have received information that huge amounts of suspicious cash has been deposited in banks, including rural and cooperative banks, in the weeks preceding the announcement of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing the media, principal director of income tax (northeast region) Sanjay Bahadur said that the Directorate of Income Tax (investigation) is coordinating with the district election officers (DEOs), chief electoral officials, the police and other law enforcement agencies on a regular basis to curb the use of black money during elections.
“We received the information from the directorate’s independent intelligence gathering. We have also seen that similarly, huge amounts of suspicious cash withdrawals have been made from banks in instalments. These transactions have so far gone below the radar of routine process of election expenditure monitoring,” informed Bahadur.
He added that ground-level intelligence indicates that it is highly possible that a substantial part of this cash flow is being misused for vitiating free and fair elections. He further said that the preliminary findings have been brought to the knowledge of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Income tax officials also blamed the DEOs for not following the ECI guidelines on the need for intimation for unusual or suspicious cash deposits or withdrawals above Rs 10 lakhs.
Bahadur said that till April 2, a total of Rs 3.04 crores has been seized by the income tax department from the entire northeastern region.
