Vijayabaskar received crores of rupees from gutkha manufacturers and SRS Mining, I-T Dept. tells Madras High Court

The Department says it has collected enormous material to prove that he had also spent ₹30.90 lakh from undisclosed sources for the Koovathur resort where AIADMK MLAs were stationed after EPS became CM

The Income Tax Department on Thursday told Madras High Court that it had seized “enormous material”, indicating that former Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar of the AIADMK had received huge amounts of money from gutkha/pan masala manufacturers and also from SRS Mining owned by J. Sekar Reddy and two others.

The counter was filed before Justice Anita Sumanth hearing a writ petition filed by the former Minister challenging the attachment of 117.46 acres of his land in Pudukottai district, besides the freezing four of his bank accounts, including the one in which he receives his MLA salary, in order to recover tax dues of ₹206.42 crore excluding interest.

After perusing the counter-affidavit submitted by senior standing counsel A.P. Srinivas, the judge granted time for the petitioner’s counsel Nithyaesh Natraj to file a rejoinder on behalf of his client. She directed the High Court Registry to list the matter on December 12 for completing the written pleadings and commencing oral arguments.

In the counter, Tax Recovery Officer Kumar Deepak Raj said the search and seizure operations were carried out on the premises related to the writ petitioner in April 2017 and materials were collected to prove that he had indulged in tax evasion by claiming excess quarry expenses and unaccounted-for sale of blue metals through his firm Rasi Blue Metals.

The seizures also showed that Mr. Vijayabaskar had received ₹85.45 crore form SRS Mining and ₹2.45 crore from gutkha/pan masala manufacturers. He had also spent ₹30.90 lakh from undisclosed sources for the accommodation of AIADMK MLAs at a resort at Koovathur when Edappadi K. Palaniswami was sworn in as the Chief Minister in February 2017.

Further, the search operations led to the unearthing of the fact that the former Minister had earned several crores of rupees through excess quarrying than the permissible limit and had not disclosed that income while filing his returns for various financial years between 2012-13 and 2018-19. Hence, the Department had passed fresh assessment orders for those years.

The petitioner had approached the Income Tax Settlement Commission multiple times but his settlement applications were rejected on all occasions on the ground that he had not made a full and fair disclosure. Thereafter, he preferred appeals before the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) for certain assessment years and they were pending.