Income Tax officials raid 23 BPTP offices

Income Tax officials on Tuesday conducted a search-and-seize operation on several premises of real estate company BPTP under alleged cases of tax evasion.

Income Tax officials on Tuesday conducted a search-and-seize operation on several premises of real estate company BPTP under alleged cases of tax evasion. The search was carried out in 23 offices of the company across the NCR to ascertain facts about under-reporting of apartment sales by the realtor.

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“We have carried out search and seizure operations in 13 premises and surveyed another 10,” a senior Income Tax official said. Nearly 100 men have been deployed in the operation and several documents have been taken in possession. “We had reports that the developer had under-reported apartment sales and the search operations are regarding that.”

A BPTP spokesperson termed the operations a routine audit by the government. “We are fully cooperating with the government,” he said.

BPTP has several residential and commercial projects across Faridabad and Noida. The developer grabbed national headlines when, in March 2008, it outbid realty majors DLF, Ansals and Omaxe to win a commercial-cum-residential 95-acre plot at Noida for a whopping R5,006 crore. This was the costliest land deal ever in India’s history.

However, a year later the company surrendered a part of this premium plot to the Noida Development Authority, as it was unable to pay the amount due to a financial crunch. The company later settled for around 21 acres of the plot and has recently launched a commercial project on this plot.