Making her displeasure over the persisting glitches in the income tax e-filing portal known to Infosys MD and CEO Salil Parekh, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday told him to fix the problems latest by September 15.
Parekh was also sensitised on the difficulties taxpayers were facing and the problems arising due to the portal’s malfunctioning.
Parekh said he and his team were doing everything to ensure the smooth functioning of the portal. He said more than 750 team members were working on this project and Infosys COO Pravin Rao was personally overseeing it.
Users continued to face glitches in the e-filing portal of the income tax department two-and-a-half months since its launch. In fact, the portal was not available last Saturday.
“The Ministry of Finance emphasised that there is a need for putting in more resources and efforts on the part of Infosys so that the much-delayed delivery of agreed services is ensured,” the ministry said in a statement.
On June 8, a day after the website was launched, Sitharaman had informed Infosys of the technical difficulties taxpayers were facing. On June 22, Sitharaman and finance ministry officials had quizzed Parekh on glitches in the income tax e-filing portal. The minister had asked Infosys to address all issues without loss of time, improve their services an redress grievances on priority.
Speaking to a group of journalists a week ago, the minister had said the I-T portal glitches would be rectified “in two-three days”.
But the new portal — http://www.incometax.gov.in — continues to be affected by technical issues. As a result, the income tax department has had to relax various norms, including allowing submission of compliance forms 15CA/15B in the manual format to the authorised dealers for any remittances to non-residents.
The e-filing portal was aimed at easing service delivery from immediate processing of income tax returns to issue quick refunds to taxpayers.