Should the name of tax evaders be provided under RTI Act?
31 Aug, 2013
An application was filed with the Division I and II of Central Excise and Customs department, Nagpur under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the information under seven heads.
The reply from the department contained answer to six of the queries but no answer was provided for the query number four which sought to get the total number of tax evaders, names of the top five persons in serial order who did not pay central excise duty and caused loss of tax revenue and action taken against them. The two divisions responded quite differently to the query. Division I, whose jurisdiction is over the Nagpur city and MIDC Hingna, replied that there were no defaulters but Division II, which covers the remaining part of the district, stated in the reply that the sought information was not specific.
The applicant has alleged that the department was quite apathetic towards the RTI applicant as neither did they answer his question about being specific nor did they help him in formatting his questions properly. The version of the department was not available.