Tax grievances? I-T dept to ensure 'e-nivaran'!

The Income Tax department has launched a special electronic grievance redressal system called 'e-nivaran' in order to fast track taxpayer grievances and ensure early resolution of their complaints.

A separate and dedicated window for grievance redressal has been launched recently in the Income Tax Business Application, the new smart electronic platform for the regular operations of the department.

The facility is called 'e-nivaran' (electronic solution) and acts to integrate all online and physical complaints gathered by the department at this platform which will be monitored by the Assessing Officer of the case upto the supervisory officers in a paperless environment.

"The new system is called unified grievance management system and is acronymed 'e-nivaran'.

The system not only records the origin of the grievance on the electronic platform it works on, but it also keeps tracking it till it reaches its logical conclusion for final resolution," a senior I-T official said.

The e-portal will also ensure that grievances related to any section or domain of the tax department is transferred quickly to the department concerned like that of refunds issue or any other IT matter concerning an assessee.

The decision to launch 'e-nivaran' was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the IT department to ensure that taxpayers grievances are resolved in the shortest possible time.

Modi had also asked all such departments which have a public interface to reduce this time to one month from the existing two months.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the policy-making body of the department, has recently created a new structure in the department to deal with these issues called -- Taxpayer Services unit.

According high priority to this issue, the Central Board of Direct Taxes had also brought a new mechanism where top officers of the department have been allotted a specific quota of complaints to monitor and track, from their origin to successful resolution.

Illustration by Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com