It was an embarrassing moment for India’s second-largest information technology company Infosys when the Income Tax (IT) department on Sunday, August 22 posted on Twitter that the Ministry of Finance has summoned the top boss of the Bengaluru-based software-services major to explain about the continued glitches in the functioning of the e-filing portal since its launch in early June this year.
“Ministry of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh, MD & CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon’ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the Income Tax department said in a Twitter post on Sunday.
However, later in the evening, Infosys in a Twitter post on Sunday said, “The emergency maintenance of the @IncomeTaxIndia portal has concluded and the portal is live. We regret any inconvenience caused to taxpayers.”
The update last night comes from the tech major ahead of managing director and CEO Salil Parekh’s crucial meeting with the Finance Ministry on Monday, August 23. This will be the tech firm’s second meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman regarding the issues in the new Income Tax portal.
The IT department’s e-filing portal went live on June 7 and since then had multiple glitches. Addressing the concern, the finance minister met Parekh, Praveen Rao, COO of Infosys and other members of the team on June 22.
“Since its launch, there were numerous glitches in the functioning of the new portal. Taking note of the grievances voiced on social media by taxpayers, tax professionals and other stakeholders, the finance minister had also flagged the issues to the vendor Infosys, calling upon them to address these concerns,” noted a statement from the Press Information Bureau dated June 22, adding that “The Finance Minister exhorted Infosys (service provider) to work on the tax portal to make it more humane and user-friendly.”
“Smt. Sitharaman asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely,” the PIB statement added.
In 2019, Infosys bagged the contract from the IT department to develop the new e-filing portal. The government had approved a total outlay of ₹4,242 crore for the project. However, between January 2019 and June 2021, Infosys received ₹164.5 crore under this project.
Shares of Infosys were trading at ₹1737, up 0.30%, on the BSE during afternoon trade on Monday, while the Sensex is marginally up by 0.51%.
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