FM summons Infosys MD to explain glitches in Income tax portal

After about two days of the income tax portal being unavailable, Infosys late on Sunday said emergency maintenance on the website has concluded and it is now live.

New Delhi:After about two days of the income tax portal being unavailable, Infosys late on Sunday said emergency maintenance on the website has concluded and it is now live.

Developed by Infosys, the new income tax e-filing portal 'www.incometax.gov.in' has had a bumpy start from the day of its launch on June 7 as it continued to face tech glitches with users complaining that certain functionalities were either unavailable or working slow.

A tweet by the Income Tax department said the portal has not been available since Saturday.

Infosys India Business, which is the Twitter handle of Infosys India Business unit, in a tweet on Sunday evening said: 'The emergency maintenance of the @IncomeTaxIndia portal has concluded and the portal is live. We regret any inconvenience caused to taxpayers.' Earlier in the day, it had tweeted that the portal was under 'emergency maintenance'.

The Finance Ministry has 'summoned' Infosys MD and CEO Salil Parekh on Monday to explain to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman the reasons for continued glitches even after over two months of launch.

As users complained of various glitches after a fortnight of launch, Sitharaman had on June 22 called a meeting with key officials of Infosys to review the issues on the portal.

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The minister had then asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, and redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely.

At that time, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh, and COO Pravin Rao, along with other company officials, had taken note of the issues highlighted by the stakeholders.

They had also acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal and shared the status of the resolution with respect to the issues highlighted by the stakeholders, as per an official statement issued after the meeting.

In 2019, Infosys was awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.

Till June 2021, the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.

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PTI