Finance Minister summons Infosys CEO over glitches

Bengaluru: Union Finance Ministry has summoned Infosys' Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh to appear before it on Monday (August 23) over continuing glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal.

In a tweet on Sunday, Income-Tax (I-T) department said, "Ministry of Finance has summoned Salil Parekh, MD & CEO of Infosys, on August 23 to explain to Finance Minister as to why even after two and half months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since August 21, the portal itself is not available."

In January 2019, Infosys was given the contract to develop the new income-tax filing portal in a bid to ease the tax filing process. However, the portal, which went live on June 7, has been facing persistent technical glitches since its launch.

To resolve these issues, the Ministry had called a meeting with Infosys officials on June 22 taking suggestions from external shareholders like the representatives of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). Earlier this week also, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had also said that all the issues faced by the income tax filers would be sorted out in two-three weeks.

"The glitches on the new Income are expected to be fixed entirely in the next two-three weeks. I have been reminding Infosys constantly and Nandan Nilekani is giving me assurances that they will sort it out," she said.

Despite these efforts, the new tax filing portal continues to face problems, leading to fears of missed deadlines and penalties among tax filers.

When reached out, Infosys' said that the portal is under emergency maintenance since August 21. "The Income Tax India portal continues to be under emergency maintenance. We will post an update once the portal is available again for taxpayers. We regret the inconvenience," the company said in a twitter post.

The spokesperson said that the company has nothing more add at the time of going to press. During the post Q1 results announcement last month, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh has said that fixing the problem faced by the income tax portal remained the single largest priority for the company. "We are working extremely hard in making sure that all of the features (of income tax portal) are being delivered. We are working expeditiously. Several of the functionalities are already working, there is a large number of returns that are being filed. There is work done in making sure that all of the stability and the performance is coming together," Parekh had told reporters. Large IT services providers like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys are managing many critical government services as technology partners.

Apart from income-tax portal, Infosys has also been awarded to develop and maintain the GST

(Goods and Services Tax) portal by the government. After initial glitches, GST portal has been largely stabilised in terms of functions.

TCS is working as the technology partner for providing passport services apart from upgrading the technology infrastructure of India Post.