IT Department (Representative image: Shutterstock)
Infosys has resolved most of the glitches in the income-tax e-filing portal and set it back in operation, CNBCTV-18 reported on October 30.
“The I-T e-filing portal has started functioning properly and glitches are fixed up to 90 percent. Taxpayers can start filing returns,” the channel quoted sources saying. The people added that Infosys is “working to fix the remaining glitches” and is expected to complete it “in another 10-15 days”.
Moneycontrol could not verify the report independently.
Chartered Accountants however disagree and say the portal is still "not working fine yet". They said users are not getting their OTPs and cannot nominate an authorised representative. "Many glitches are still there," one CA said, asking not to be named.
Infosys was awarded the contract in 2019 to develop the a new I-T portal that would replace the old one. The aim was to reduce the processing time from 63 days to one day for a total outlay of Rs 4,200 crore. But it ran into glitches soon after it was launched on June 7, 2021. It was peak tax season and everything went downhill since.
While the idea was to have a taxpayer-friendly portal that would be simple in design and use, and expedite refunds, this has now become a running joke with the portal being inaccessible more often than not.
A few hours after the launch, tax professionals took to Twitter, tagging Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and said that the site was not working.
A day later, Sitharaman asked Infosys co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani to address the users’ concerns. As the issues persisted, Infosys was summoned by the finance ministry on June 22. During the meeting, which was attended by CEO Salil Parekh virtually and COO Pravin Rao in person, the company assured that it has augmented the team to address the glitches and the team was working to resolve them.
Two months later, on August 23 the team met the finance minister again and was given the ultimatum of September 15 to resolve the issues. While the company assured that it was working on it expeditiously and deployed 750 employees on the project with COO Rao overseeing it, there was not much clarity on what had gone wrong.
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