No Office Assistants for Income Tax AOs - Board Frowns
ASSESSMENT officers of many charges have conveyed to the Board that they are not being provided any secretarial assistance or other office help and they are left with no option but to make private arrangement to finalise their assessment order and other time bound matters.
Chairperson, CBDT has viewed this matter very seriously. While it is true that the Department is facing shortages of man power, however, the current situation where assessing officers are forced to make private arrangements for secretarial assistance and other help to run their office is highly undesirable and cannot be allowed to continue without seriously compromising the functioning of the Department.
Attention of the Chief Commissioners is invited to Rule 178 of GFR 2005, which allows outsourcing of certain services in the interest of economy and efficiency. It is also noted that every Commissionerate has already been sanctioned a budget of Rs. 30 lacs for meeting expenses of this nature. The Chief Commissioners are accordingly requested to ensure that these funds are properly utilised and every assessing officer in all the Commissionerates under their charge is provided with adequate secretarial assistance and other office help either through the regular employees of the department or through outsourcing. In case, further funds are needed in this regard, requisition should immediately be sent to the DIT (Expenditure Budget) under DG(Logistics).
Board wants all action in this regard to be completed by the end of this month.