FM's meeting with Salil Parekh of Infosys postponed for Thursday

Mumbai, Aug 23 The much-hyped meeting the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, was supposed to have with the managing director and CEO of the I-T major, Infosys, Salil Parekh, today, has been postponed for Thursday (August 26).

A source familiar with the development told Bizz Buzz that the meeting between FM and Infosys head, which was supposed to be held today, has been postponed for Thursday.

Citing the reason behind it, the source said that as the officials of Income Tax department in New Delhi, who are supposed to be on the panel are not available on the day.

With the new Income Tax filing portal becoming completely inaccessible over the weekend, and yet to become fully functional 77 days after its launch, a furious Finance Ministry summoned Infosys Managing Director and CEO Salil Parekh to explain the mess to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in person on August 23.

"Ministry of Finance has summoned Shri Salil Parekh, MD & CEO @Infosys 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," the Income Tax Department stated on August 22.

And just hours after the 'summons', the Income Tax portal became accessible again on August 22 evening. "The emergency maintenance of the @IncomeTaxIndia portal has concluded and the portal is live. We regret any inconvenience caused to taxpayers," Infosys said in a tweet at 8.52 p.m. IST.

The Ministry had launched the 'taxpayer friendly' portal developed by Infosys on June 7, promising immediate processing of I-T returns to issue quick refunds to taxpayers, and a host of other features. But many critical functionalities were non-starters from Day One and problems continued to fester despite a claimed course correction.

On August 21 afternoon, Infosys said the I-T portal is 'currently inaccessible due to planned maintenance'. On August 22, the company switched from the 'planned maintenance' argument to say that the portal 'continues to be under emergency maintenance'.

The Finance Ministry went public with the summons to Parekh about 100 minutes later.

"We will post an update once the portal is available again for taxpayers. We regret the inconvenience," the global IT major's India business unit said on Twitter.

A senior official of Tax Practitioners' Association (TPA), who was supposed to attend today's meeting, said that the meeting couldn't be held today for some technical reason and it will now take place on Thursday.

The non-functioning of the portal is particularly embarrassing for the government as just last week, the Finance Minister had said all its glitches were expected to be fixed entirely in the 'next two-three days'.

Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj had been "neutrally monitoring the progress" on fixing the glitches 'on a weekly basis' and 10-15 taxation experts were working with the Ministry to engage with Infosys on a day-to-day basis, she had said.

The government wants to have a combined portals of both, Income Tax and indirect taxes, on a single platform so as to avoid any kind of tax evasion.

"I have been reminding Infosys constantly not to let the taxpayers down… and Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me — 'this is where we are… I assure you we will sort it out'. I have been reminding them 'August is coming', 'August is here', and so on," the Minister said on August 16.

Sitharaman expressed regret about the new portal's dysfunctional systems on July 28 and said the portal had been tried out before its launch.

Yet another source said that an internal meeting was held today, though the full-fledged meeting was still waited. The next meeting is likely to take place at 3.30 PM on Thursday, the source added.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Srinivasa Rao, president, Tax Payers' Association, said that he received a call from a senior I-T department official today to discuss the contents of queries to be prepared for National E-Assessment Scheme (NeAC). NeAC will form part of the meeting the FM will be having with the Infosys top honcho on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers continue to face lots of problem due to the prevailing glitches in the portal.

A tax practitioner said that we are unable to file I-T return of our clients due to the ongoing problem with the newly launched I-T Department's portal.