Big blow for Congress: Party served with income tax notice of Rs 1,800 crore.

The Congress party was served a notice of Rs 1,800 crore by the Income Tax Department, including penalty and interest for the assessment years from 2017-18 and 2020-21. The notice was served hours after the Delhi High Court rejected Congress’ pleas against the tax reassessment proceedings by the I-T department.

The development was confirmed by Congress leader Vivek Tankha.

The Delhi High Court rejected petitions by Congress challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings against a period of four years by tax authorities. Another tax reassessment proceedings initiation was challenged by the party for the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17, which was also dismissed last week.

A bench of Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav said the pleas were rejected in terms of its earlier decision refusing to interfere with the opening of re-assessment for another year.

This comes after the Congress party stated that their bank accounts have been frozen and they are unable to do campaignings. “All our bank accounts have been frozen. We can do no campaign work, we cannot support our workers, we cannot support our candidates. Our leaders cannot travel from one part of the country to the other. We’re unable to put out our ads,” said Rahul Gandhi in a press conference.

The Congress leader said that this has happened two months before the election campaign. He said that one notice in the case came for the 90s and another for 6-7 years ago. Gandhi said that the quantum amount was Rs 14 lakh and the punishment was the party’s entire financial identity.

Gandhi accused the Election Commission of not doing anything.