FM Nirmala Sitharaman summons Infosys MD over tax portal glitches

By Asianet Newsable EnglishFirst Published Aug 22, 2021, 6:56 PM IST
Highlights

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has summoned Infosys Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh on Monday with regard to the glitches in the newly launched e-filing portal. 

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has summoned Infosys Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh on Monday with regard to the glitches in the newly launched e-filing portal. 

Parekh will be asked to explain to the finance minister the reasons why the glitches had not been resolved yet. 

The new tax portal has been suffering glitches since the day it went online. The portal has been offline since Saturday

Ministry of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh,MD&CEO on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon'ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact,since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available.

— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia)

The government had recently informed Parliament about 90 unique glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal.

Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary had said that Infosys acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal. 

Infosys team had informed the government that technical issues noticed in the website's functioning were being resolved continuously.

The new income tax e-filing website was launched in June 2021. The revamped website --www.incometax.gov.in -- was rolled out to improve the taxpayers' experience and to make the income tax return filing process seamless by providing pre-filled information to taxpayers. 

It was targeted at facilitating the immediate processing of tax returns and quickly issue refunds.

However, after the launch, taxpayers and chartered accountants reported a number of glitches. This prompted Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to summon the Infosys officials to resolve these issues.

Some issues that the taxpayers complained about, including slowness of the portal, non-availability of certain functionalities or technical issues in functionalities, were then addressed. But there are still a number of issues that have been detected on the platform.

Senior officials of the finance ministry had met the Infosys team last month on June 22 to discuss the technical glitches.

During Monday's meeting, the Finance Minister is expected to be pulled up Infosys over the delays in sorting out the issues with the new tax portal.

Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar took to Twitter to urge technology companies to see such projects as special responsibility and deploy their best teams.

Indian Tech Cos working on critical Govt tech solutions , must consider these projcts as SPECIAL responsbility n deploy their best teams - these are important bcoz these projcts impact people of India.

Cmon - time to up ur game n do a good job ✅ https://t.co/zDofgwefsY

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI)
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