Employees of the Income Tax Department would go on indefinite strike if their long pending demand would not be taken seriously particularly by the officials of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). The agitated staff also held a lunch-on demonstration at IT Head Quarter here at lucknow on Wednesday.
General secretary of the Income Tax Employees Federation, JP Singh disclosed here on Wednesday afternoon that they dispatched a letter in this regard to the Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (lucknow). They requested him to immediately intervene into the matter and take up the issue with senior officials of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) who had dump the matter related to employees promotions, cadre review etc now for last several years.
JP Singh claimed that the staff is facing insurmountable problems and sufferings due to lethargic attitude of the CBDT authorities towards their genuine demands. He said that some of the issues have been already discussed and senior officials also gave their nod for their approval but nothing has been done so far even when almost two years had passed.
He disclosed that all India representatives have been persistently pressing for hold the mandatory Quarterly Review Meeting with the Chairperson for the last seven months. He said that after fixing the meeting, the Chairperson is either not attending the meeting or leaving midway to avoid any discussion on the issues.
JP Singh further claimed that due to lethargic attitude of the authorities, the employees are suffering on various counts like denial of benefits of promotions, cadre review already approved by the Cabinet on May 23, 2013, recovery resorted by the accounts department, agony and sufferings of the casual labourers, total stagnation in promotion.
He said that several attempts have been made by the All India leadership to settle the issues through negotiations but they all failed due to non-serious approach of officials of CBDT. JP Singh said that they threatened that if the CBDT would not hold some meaningful dialogue with the leaders and would solve the issues immediately than the employees would not hesitate to carry out a big demonstration against the officers concerned.