Govt claim on VAT dept vacancies is misleading, says HC

The mismatch in figures, in the opinion of the court, gives a misleading picture that the Government of NCT of Delhi is making constant endeavours to fill all the vacancies in the various cadres of the DVAT department.

Delhi high court has termed city government’s claims that it was making efforts to fill up vacancies in its Department of Trade and Taxes (DVAT) as “misleading” and asked the principal secretary (services) to appear before it and explain the situation.

Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice Deepa Sharma pointed to “mismatch in figures” of the vacancies which gave a “misleading picture” on the entire situation.

The high court arrived at the finding as the number of vacancies for the post of Value Added Tax Officer (VATO) and Additional Value Added Tax Officer (AVATO), as indicated by the government, did not include those officials who were posted to other departments on notional basis.

“The claim that only 18 vacancies exist in the cadre of VATO is facially incorrect if one were to notice that there are as many as 35 officers who are posted notionally for pay purposes and continue to discharge their responsibilities in the other departments that they are presently occupying,” the bench said.

The bench also asked the bureaucrat to file an affidavit indicating the actual number of officers working in the cadres of VATO and AVATO from September 2016 and what was meant by ‘notional posting for pay purposes’.

The bench noted that over 1.48 lakh refund claims were pending in the department from September, 2016. The court said it was constrained to pass the order as a large number of refund applications were pending in the DVAT which upon enquiry was “found to be caused by the considerable number of vacancies” in the posts of VATO, AVATO and other staff.