Govt ‘summons’ Infosys CEO after income tax portal outage

Govt ‘summons’ Infosys CEO after income tax portal outage

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:23.08.2021

A day after the income tax portal became “unavailable”, the finance ministry on Sunday said that it has “summoned” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh to explain why errors have not been fixed two-and-a-half months after the platform was launched.

Although the “emergency maintenance” of the website was completed on Sunday evening, and it went live again, the shutdown had caused considerable embarrassment. On Saturday, Infosys had tweeted about a “planned maintenance”, although the tax department had remained silent about it until about 2pm on Sunday when it tweeted about the Infosys CEO being “summoned”.

During this time, several users had come across a message saying the “portal is going through a maintenance”.

Just last week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had told reporters that revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj was regularly monitoring the issue and the glitches would be removed in the next few days.

This is the second time that the government has publicly named Infosys in the case. Two months ago, the company brass held consultations with the FM and other stakeholders after she had flagged the concerns on social media, hours after the June 7 launch.

Government functionaries are to Parekh again on Monday.

‘I-T portal launched without enough tests’

During this time, users came across a message saying the “portal is going through a maintenance”. Last week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj was regularly monitoring the issue and the glitches would be fixed soon. This is the second time that the government has publicly named Infosys in the case. Two months ago, the company brass held consultations with the FM and other stakeholders after she had flagged the concerns on social media, hours after the June 7 launch.

Government functionaries are likely to meet Parekh again on Monday.

Sunday’s tweet points to the government’s growing impatience over the quality of service offered by Infosys with GST

Network and MCA-21 (for corporate filings and database) being other assignments where the Indian tech giant’s role has come under the lens. While the government has repeatedly blamed the IT vendor for the problems with the new income tax portal, it has offered no response on how a faulty system was allowed to go live by officials handling the high-profile project. Some of their colleagues and former tax officials have suggested that sufficient tests were not conducted before the system was launched.

A source said the portal was ready for launch last year itself, but the rollout was planned to be done in phases, a decision that was changed later.

A questionnaire sent to the Central Board of Direct Taxes on Sunday remained unanswered, while Bajaj did not respond to text messages. In the past too, tax authorities have refused to offer any explanation on how the department had failed to spot multiple glitches in the platform. The problems with the portal have already prompted the tax department to offer some concessions. Besides, officials have blamed the snags for a massive slowdown in tax refunds.

Between April and August 16, refunds added up to Rs 49,696 crore against close to Rs 96,000 crore between April and August 25 last year. The number of refunds which added up to over 25.5 lakh till August 25, 2020, have dropped to 22.7 lakh so far this year. Also, repeated disruptions have led to demands to defer the deadline for filing returns apart from seeking other relaxations.

Although some experts had suggested reverting to the earlier system till the issues in the new portal were sorted out, Sitharaman has ruled out the possibility. “While several of the issues have been resolved, new problems keep coming up,” a leading CA said.

“The new e-filing portal was expected to replace the existing e-filing portal. It was viewed to create a strong technology backbone by enabling (a) host of new functionalities to taxpayers, including enhancement of look, feel and usage experience. We regret to say that after the expiry of more than two months, the portal is still not functioning and is suffering from several serious problems,” the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society said in a letter to the FM on August11.

Government functionaries are likely to meetInfy chief Salil Parekh again on Monday