Guwahati: Election Commission of India has requisitioned services of Directorate of Income Tax (investigation) North East Region under article 324 of Constitution of India for effective election expenditure monitoring, "to curb the use of black money in elections".
Since the date of notification of General Elections, 2019, over 150 officials have been deployed across North East to monitor 112 districts and 12 airports. The Directorate is coordinating with State CEOs, DEOs, police and other law enforcement agencies in the region on a daily basis.
As per a press communiqué, the directorate is receiving support from state authorities and other agencies. Independent human intelligence is also being gathered by the officers to track sources of such black money flowing during the election period.
Directorate's independent intelligence gathering initiative has thrown up an alarming fact that huge amounts of suspicious cash have been deposited in banks, including rural and cooperative banks in the weeks preceding the announcement of elections. Similarly, huge amounts of suspicious cash withdrawals have been made. These transactions have so far gone below the radar of routine process of election expenditure monitoring and ground level intelligence indicates it is highly possible that substantial part of this cash flow is being misused for vitiating free and fair elections. This preliminary finding has been brought to the knowledge of Election Commission of India.
To prevent such possible misuse of banks during the election process, Election Commission of India has clear guidelines and standing instructions whereby DEO's are required to call for information of unusual or suspicious cash deposits or withdrawals from banks, process the information and take action. Specifically, ECI has instructed that cash deposits or withdrawals above Rs 10 lakh shall mandatorily be passed on to the Income Tax Department for necessary action under Income Tax Laws.
However, these instructions of ECI are not being complied with by DEO's. Banks contacted by the Directorate have expressed ignorance of ECI guidelines. As per the communiqué, since notification of elections on March 18 till March 31 only 14 DEO's out of 112 odd districts concerned have sent reports. Moreover, the matter has been flagged to state CEOs by income Tax Nodal Officer but the response so far is negligible.
ECI has directed Income Tax investigations Directorates to use all resources at their command to make expenditure monitoring effective. Therefore, in the absence of required inputs from designated authorities so far, several important steps have been taken independently by this Directorate. Also, Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and major banks operating in Northeast have been asked to supply digital data relating to cash deposits and withdrawals above Rs 10 lakh.
The Directorate has scheduled an inter agency coordination meet for EEM on April 4, 2019 for better synergy and exchange of actionable intelligence in real time.
It is to be noted that since April 2, 2019, seizures of Rs 1.96 crores cash in various interceptions, including at airports have been made in Northeast under Income Tax Act since election announcement.