15 senior income tax officials sacked to purge department’s black sheep

The centre has compulsorily retired 15 senior Income Tax officials over charges of corruption and malpractices as part of an ongoing campaign to cleanse the department of tainted employees. A document released by the government said this was in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise of cracking down on certain "black sheep in the tax administration" during his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort last month.

The officials placed under compulsory retirement were identified as OP Meena, Sailendra Mamidi, PK Bajaj, Sanjeev Ghei, K Jayaprakash, Appalu Raju, Rakesh H Sharma, Nitin Garg, SA Fazululla, Kripa Sagar Das, Jose Kunjippalu, CJ Vincent, TK Bhattacharya, Kamlesh Kumar Tripathi and SR Senapati. News agency PTI stated that while many of them are being investigated by the CBI, one was even caught red-handed accepting a bribe of Rs 15,000.

This is the fourth instance of the Narendra Modi government sacking tax officials en masse since June. As many as 49 high-ranking tax officers, including 12 from the Central Board of Direct Taxes, were compulsorily retired in the three previous rounds.