No coercive steps on Cong

■ Continued From Page 1 not going to take any coercive action against the party and dubbed it “gracious”.

“I am very rarely rendered speechless. By my learned friend’s intervention, I have been rendered speechless. Kindly have it in July,” he said.

As the hearing began, Mr Mehta said: “To balance the equity. The petitioner is a political party. Based upon the 2016 judgment, which is under challenge, we have raised the demand of `1,700 crores. Since the election is going on, we would not like any problem to arise for any party and therefore, till the matter is heard after the election, we will not take any action for recovery of `1,700 crores.”

Mr Mehta said the impugned judgment of the Delhi high court is of March 23, 2016, and based upon the parameters set by it, a tax demand was raised against the party in 2021.

“They (Congress party) were given an option to pay 20 per cent of that demand but they did not avail. Thereafter, nothing was paid. Therefore, in 2024, we recovered `135 crores of the 2021 demand and based upon the same parameters, now we have issued a demand of `1,700 crores approximately,” the solicitor-general submitted.

The I-T department has a lot to say on the merit of the issue and they would like to file a reply to the main petition filed against the high court’s verdict, Mr Mehta said.

When Justice Nagarathna asked Mr Mehta whether the demand notices were the subject matter of the petition, he said: “No, that is not the subject matter of the petition.”

On a query from the bench if the solicitor-general meant to keep the demand raised against Congress in abeyance, Mr Mehta said: “No, I don't want to keep the demand in abeyance. I am saying that please record my statement that till the matter is heard in the second week of June or whenever, we will not take any coercive steps with regard to the demand raised”.

During the hearing, Mr Singhvi pointed out that in March several tax demand notices were issued and the amount was not `1,700 crores but about `3,500 crores approximately for a block of five years.

According to the Congress Party, it has received fresh notices from the income-tax department, raising a tax demand of `1,745 crores for the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.

With this latest notice, the I-T department has raised a total demand of `3,567 crore from the party.

On March 28, the high court rejected the Congress’ petitions challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings against it for a period of four years from 2017 to 2021 by the tax authorities.