GUWAHATI: The Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation), NER organized a “Synergy Meeting” of 24 central and state agencies and banks to harness they are combined institutional and human intelligence for the strengthening of Election Expenditure Monitoring exercise of ECI here on Thursday.
According to a press release, this is first of its kind meeting by the Directorate to emphasize and explore the potential of informal joint efforts to contribute to free and fair elections by creating a multi-layered deterrence to use of black money during elections. Participants included senior officials of police, CISF, CRPF, BSF, NIA, IB, DRI, ED, NCB, RBI, Railways, Airport Authority, Customs and leading banks. In a symbolic gesture of cooperation and synergy between federal and state agencies, the meeting was jointly conducted by Sanjay Bahadur, Principal Director of Investigation, North East Region and Mukesh Agarwal, Additional Director General Police, Assam.
Detailed discussions were held on ways in which all agencies can pool in effort and information to enable quicker reaction by Flying Squads of state authorities and Surveillance Teams of Income Tax whenever suspicious cash above Rs 10 lakh is mobilized. Directorate officers gave several suggestions to banks, CISF, Airport Authority and Railways to intensify monitoring and real-time reporting of high-value suspicious cash movement. Anindita Bhattacharya, GM, RBI, Gautam Rai Choudhary, DGM, SBI and S Radhakrishnan, GM, Airport Authority of India assured full cooperation in this effort of Investigation Directorate. The Directorate felt a strong need for this kind of inter-agency synergy in the wake of its recent finding that a very large number of suspicious cash deposits and withdrawals are taking place in banking space which had so far gone unreported to Income Tax. Till date, Investigation Directorate has seized Rs. 4.42 crore of cash under Income Tax Laws. Sanjay Bahadur specially praised CRPF and BSF who have also contributed to interception of cash that resulted in seizures.
Also Read: GUWAHATI CITY