The Finance Ministry on Sunday summoned the Chief Executive Officer of Infosys, Salil Parekh, to explain why the new income tax portal (www.incometax.gov.in), developed by the company, is yet to work seamlessly. The meeting is to take place on Monday.
The explanation is being sought by the hon’ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since the launch of the new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the Income Tax Department said in a tweet. The portal went live on June 7 and since then has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
The Finance Minister had said glitches on the new Income Tax portal was expected to be fixed entirely in the next 2 to 3 days. “I have been reminding Infosys constantly and Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me with assurances that they will sort it out,” the Minister had said.
Since its launch in early June, many critical functionalities of the income tax portal have been non-starters and the Minister had admitted that there are ‘still some issues’ with it.
“Revenue Secretary [Tarun Bajaj] has been neutrally monitoring the progress on fixing the portal on a weekly basis,” Ms Sitharaman had said, stressing that she had been pushing Infosys ‘not to let the taxpayers down’ with constant reminders.
The Ministry’s latest statement on August 22 suggests the situation has got worse instead of improving, with the income tax portal becoming inaccessible since August 21.