Kapurthala district BJP chief under excise scanner

District BJP president Sham Sunder Aggarwal has come under the scanner of the excise and taxation department for causing a loss of over Rs 3 crore to the department via fake input tax credits to claim value-added tax (VAT) refund in past 10 years.

District BJP president Sham Sunder Aggarwal has come under the scanner of the excise and taxation department for causing a loss of over Rs 3 crore to the department via fake input tax credits to claim value-added tax (VAT) refund in past 10 years.

The department, in the notice issued on August 5, had asked the PK and company of the BJP leader to deposit Rs 95.49 lakh VAT pending for 2007-08, within a month.

The BJP leader had allegedly availed wrong ITC on the purchases made from cancelled dealers and the dealers, who had either not filed returns or filed nil returns, the assessment of the excise department revealed.

The notice (a copy with HT) states that it was also detected that the BJP leader had managed to change the returns because data fed in the computer differs from the data in the annual statement by a taxable person (VAT-20).

The inquiry, conducted by assistant excise and taxation commissioner Paramjit Singh, revealed that as many as 19 firms, with which he had transacted business, had not filed returns or filed nil returns. Singh said that he was showing bogus traders and depositing the amount the same day to show the genuineness of the transactions.

Aggarwal said, “I have appealed to the DETC. I have done nothing wrong. It is at the behest of my political rivals, who are trying to malign my image.”