Terming Income Tax Department’s Rs 30.67 crore tax notice served to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as “bogus” and “vindictive”, the AAP on Monday said it was being targeted by different Government agencies. Party has maintained the record of every donation and there was no violation at all.
“The IT Department has declared the complete amount of donations we received as illegal and has put it under the category of taxable income although we have maintained the records of each paisa that we received from donors,” AAP Treasurer Deepak Bajpai told the media on Monday.
The IT notice said the AAP had not disclosed income of Rs 13.16 crore and that its total taxable income calculated by it was Rs 68.44 crore for fiscal 2014-15 and 2015-16 and that the money received as donation in its bank was not recorded in the account books.
The IT notice also said that the AAP had not recorded full details of 461 donors who had given a total of Rs 6.26 crore, each donation amount exceeding Rs 20,000. The AAP was also accused of not disclosing the donations in its web site.
Bajpai dismissed the charges, saying the party had been keeping and maintaining books of accounts and other documents (of contribution in excess of Rs 20,000) under Section 13A of the Income Tax Act.
“We have been regularly submitting reports to the Election Commission of Indian about the donations received as per the law,” Bajpai said.
“The whole country knows how other parties finance themselves through black money, yet it is AAP which is being targeted using different agencies. This shows that the IT notice is nothing but vendetta,” he said.
Another party leader, Raghav Chadha, tweeted: “Only political party that maintains 100 per cent propriety, transparency and compliance in its funding is being targeted yet again. Centre’s vendetta comes out as an all-out war on this political toddler called AAP as they declare all our donations illegal.”