E-Paper
I-T Department set to tighten noose around Raghuraj
AFTER RECOVERING a huge sum as tax liabilities on undeclared income from Udai Pratap Singh, father of Food and Civil Supplies Minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh, the Income Tax Department is all set to serve notices on the minister for recovery of tax worth over Rs 4 crore on undisclosed income from ?unknown? sources.
AFTER RECOVERING a huge sum as tax liabilities on undeclared income from Udai Pratap Singh, father of Food and Civil Supplies Minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh, the Income Tax Department is all set to serve notices on the minister for recovery of tax worth over Rs 4 crore on undisclosed income from ‘unknown’ sources.
Interest and penalty will be recovered in addition to the liabilities. Notices are also being prepared for recovery of taxes along with penalty and interest thereon from the minister’s mother, wife and various trusts being controlled and managed by Raghuraj or his family.
It has been detected during I-T investigations that Udai Pratap Singh had never filed any income tax returns while the minister filed the returns regularly without showing income from various, including fishing, sources. Over three-dozen bank accounts and FDs etc, mostly in different branches of the Cooperative Bank, were detected and a huge sum was found in one account of Udai Pratap Singh alone.
The Allahabad High Court had, a few days back, dismissed a ‘bunch of writ petitions’ filed by the minister, his family members and others challenging the notices under Section 158 BC of the Income Tax Act-1961.
It is noteworthy that former Chief Minister Mayawati, while settling her political scores with Raghuraj, had demolished his empire in Kunda. The police had recovered jewellery worth crores of rupees during raids on different places.
esides several other undisclosed sources of income had also come to light.
In the dismissed ‘bunch of writ petitions’, Raghuraj and others had challenged the I-T raids on various premises on December 16, 2002. Disposing of the petitions on July 14, 2006, Justice Pradeep Kant and Justice RP Yadav had observed that they had gone through the information gathered by the Income Tax Department and found vital information in the form of facts mentioned in the fax message sent by the secretary, National Urban Cooperative Bank Limited, Pratapgarh, showing a huge amount of money
in the account of Udai Pratap Singh, who never filed any income tax returns.
Inquiries made by the police which have been brought on record did show various businesses, including sale of liquor and fishing, run by Raghuraj. But the same were never shown in the returns filed by him. This did constitute the relevant material for entertaining the reasonable belief that it was a case of tax evasion where in undisclosed income and property had not been subjected to any tax, the court said adding that the search against Raghuraj, Manjul Raje and Bhavni Kumari was legal and valid.
The entire case was single handedly managed by Pradeep Agarwal, senior standing council for the Income Tax Department, while the opposite party’s advocate was Dhruv Agarwal.
