‘Information gap exists only in Mumbai’

The problem of information collected by the Central Information Branch of the Income Tax (I-T) department not being transferred to the field officials because of the faulty computer software is only in Mumbai.

The problem of information collected by the Central Information Branch of the Income Tax (I-T) department not being transferred to the field officials because of the faulty computer software is only in Mumbai.

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“I have made enquiries at other offices of the CIB and found that the system is functioning there,” AC Tejpal, director of Income Tax (CIB), Mumbai, said in a letter (dated August 31, 2009) to the Director General of Income Tax (Investigation).

In his letter, Tejpal also asked if this problem was because the information collected by the CIB Mumbai is “explosive and sensitive in nature”. Tejpal said that due to non-functioning of the computer system, “honest attempts were made by his predecessors to disseminate the information manually through compact disks (CDs)”.

“However, the CDs were taken back and the officers concerned were ordered to get the CDs back from all (those) officers to whom they had handed over the copies,” he said. Tejpal said the CDs contained some material that involved certain dignitaries of the country.

“The material was taken back to save these higher ups and a very strange reason was assigned that all the information has to be disseminated only through [computer] system,” the letter said. “As far as the [computer] system is concerned, it is simply not functioning at all. It has never functioned in the past.”