The Income Tax department has unearthed non-disclosure of property transactions worth Rs 3,000 crore that have taken place in two sub-registrar offices in Tamil Nadu in the past five years, officials said on Wednesday.
The Intelligence and Criminal Investigation wing, Directorate of Tamil Nadu of the Income Tax department conducted a survey in the sub-registrar office in Uraiyur in Tiruchirappalli district and another SRO office in Redhills in Tiruvallur district on Tuesday and Wednesday.
More than 20 Income Tax officials and eight armed police personnel were involved in the exercise, which went on for more than 20 hours, sources said.
According to Income Tax rules, an Inspector-General or a Sub-Registrar should declare information about purchase or sale by any person of immovable property "if it is Rs 30 lakh or more", in the form of a Statement of Financial Transaction (SFT) to the department.
"The statements should be furnished on or before May 31 following the financial year in which the transaction was registered," sources said.
Despite conducting several outreach programmes by the I-T department to SROs, educating them to file the SFTs on time, "there was reluctance and non-compliance" from several officers of the TN registration department to report specified transactions within the due date, they said.
In the latest survey conducted at the sub-registrar offices in Redhills and Uraiyur, the authorities unearthed the non-disclosure of property transactions worth Rs 3,000 crore that have taken place during the past five financial years.
"While the non-disclosure of property transactions that have taken place was valued at Rs 2,000 crore at the SRO in Redhills, it was Rs 1,000 crore in Uraiyur SRO. In Uraiyur alone, a whopping Rs 1,000 crore worth of property transactions has taken place which was not disclosed to the department. This emerged during the survey," sources told PTI.
The survey was necessitated because the SROs in the two districts were found to be "non-filers or defect filers" of SFTs, they added.
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