The finance ministry has summoned Infosys chief Salil Parekh tomorrow to explain the unwanted discrepancies in the newly crafted income tax e-filing portal, used since June. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had discussed this matter and have expressed her concern over it. Mr Parekh and senior executive Praveen Rao were asked to work on the portal to make it “more humane and user-friendly”, the finance ministry had said.
Today, a tweet from the official Income Tax India handle read: “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 the 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,”
Infosys had designed the new portal, which was found to have several technical issues after it started service. Users flagged the issue, often tweeting screenshots of the site and tagging the finance minister.
The affected areas comprised ultra-simple tasks like profile updating or altering passwords. Many users also reported, “The portal was extremely slow and logging in took considerable time.”
Between the slot of January 2019 to June 2021, the government has paid a whopping Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal and enhancing its user experience.
The software giant was asked to “address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely”, the ministry said.
Till now, Nandan Nilekani, the non-executive chairman of Infosys, has been directly reporting to Ms Sitharaman on the details, weekly basis. Mr Nilekani asserted that “They would be resolved in a matter of days.”
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