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CORRUPTION
A pleasant personality with
spiritual thinking has now taken over the administration of this Sales Tax
Department. The Tribunal Bar Association had invited him for interaction with
the members. He came alone. It was unusual. We had never seen the Commissioner
moving without the aids. He came. He spoke. He opened up the discussion with the
firm commitment that the first item on his agenda was to eliminate the
corruption in the Department. We were overwhelmed to hear him. No Commissioner
till today had given priority to this subject. In fact, it was considered as a
part of the life.
But, Sir, with due respect, if you really wish to take any
step in this regard, you will have to first get Sec.10 of the MVAT Act, 2002
amended and bring it in tune with section 20 of the earlier Act so as to have
control over your subordinates. For how many persons you will issue
notifications? If their transfers are not in your hand, your powers are
worthless. Withdrawal of delegation is no solution. During your short tenure in
this Department, you must have experienced people running to Mantralaya for
their postings. We see and we know the malice behind this concentration of power
there, but we become helpless in the matter since the legislature has done this
in it’s wisdom (in public interest) and unless we get the concrete evidence in
this regard even the PIL will not work.
Despite this, we give you our firm assurance to support you
in your endeavour. We have heard about you. You are a courageous person. We are
confident that you are capable of achieving your goals. We are with you.
Sir, you wish to play a lead role in the empowered committee.
For this, both our Associations are at your disposal. You give us the
assignments and we shall complete the same. The High Court at Bombay and the
Maharashtra Sales Tax Tribunal are playing the lead role in the jurisprudence in
this country. Why not the Sales Tax Department?
Sir, we are aware that your VAT implementation work has got
hampered due to the Writ Petition filed by the Sales Tax Practitioners’
Association. It may further suffer if either side goes to apex court. But here
again we are helpless. Some crooked have worked to treat the equals as unequals
and have thrown around 15,000 Sales Tax Practitioners enrolled on your list and
equal number of advocates out of profession. This forced the petition. Even
otherwise the audit provision as enacted is not going to serve the purpose. The
Department did not do any survey nor do they have any data regarding the real
eligible persons for undertaking VAT audit. Form No. 704 in it’s present form
requires indepth knowledge of Sales Tax and allied laws for the scrutiny of the
various claims mentioned therein. It is more than an assessment. We have not
come across any officer in the Department, in the past, who could do more than
twenty to twenty five assessments after proper scrutiny of the claims. In such
circumstances it was absolutely necessary to find out the real eligible persons
who can make the audit of around 1,60,000 dealers. Resultantly, the persons who
do not have even preliminary knowledge of Sales Tax have undertaken this job.
This fact you will realise after you receive all the audit reports. Anyway, all
the best.
Vinayak Patkar
Editor |
