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The Inaugural Ceremony of Induction Training for 73rd batch of Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers was held at the National Academy of Direct Taxes (NADT), Nagpur, on Friday, 24thof January, 2020.

Shri Prabhash Shankar, Member (Tax Payer Services & Systems), CBDT, Government of India was the Chief Guest on the occasion. Faculty   Members of NADT and Regional Training Institutes and Senior officers from the Income Tax Department, Nagpur and other departments in Nagpur were also present on the occasion. 

The batch comprises of 98 Officer Trainees. This strength of 98 Officer Trainees includes 2 officers from Royal Bhutan Service. The average age of the Batch is 28.4 years. The youngest Officer Trainee of the batch is 24 years old and the oldest Officer Trainee is 36 years old. 14 Officer Trainees are married; the married OTs comprise 14.6% of the batch strength. There are 31 lady Officer Trainees, which is just over 30% of the total batch strength.

 

In his inaugural address, Shri Prabhash Shankar,  Member emphasized that NADT has a great role to play in moulding the future of the department and advised Officer Trainees of 73rd Batch of IRS to become the brand ambassadors of Income Tax Department. Further, he informed that over the time, Income Tax Department has chartered its way from the traditional mind set of scrutiny assessment to the recently introduced e-assessment and faceless assessment. He emphasized that the future lies in the Jurisdiction-less & Team-based assessment and NADT as a training institute must ensure that the Officer Trainees of 73rd Batch of IRS are well- equipped with such assessment procedures. Moreover, he informed that even the Income Tax appellate proceedings will be carried out electronically in future.

 

He elaborated that the Department, through data mining has collected substantial information of tax payer’s information, which is being utilized for revenue augmentation under the aegis of Project- ‘Insight’.  He informed that in the last four years, the Department has grown substantially, as reflected in the revenue target collection of Rs. 7 Lakh Crores five years ago to Rs. 13.50 Lakhs Crores in the current Financial Year. Also, the tax base has widened substantially.  However, he cautioned that  much needs to be done on both these fronts and it is incumbent upon the new entrants in the Department to take this  forward.  

 

Shri Shankar also apprised the Officer Trainees of 73rd Batch of IRS that the Income Tax Department has necessarily to be more Tax payer friendly and to achieve this goal, twin initiatives viz. CPGRAMS, the Grievance redressal mechanism, directly monitored by PMO and E-NIVARAN are given critical importance by the Department.

 

Emphasizing the greater role of the Income Tax Department, Shri Shankar stated that the Government has consciously taken the  decision that Black Money Act and Benami Transaction Act are to be administered by the Department only.  In the same vein, he stressed that NADT has to give special focus on these new subjects.

After going through the details of the training programme of 73rd Batch of IRS, he commented that NADT is providing world class training to the Probationers that  it is incumbent upon them to deliver the services of the same caliber when they join the field in the very near future.  

Smt Alka Tyagi, Principal Director General (Training), NADT, in her address informed that the focal point of the training at NADT is centered on the 5 point Charter spelt out by the Hon’ble PM for the Income Tax Department: RAPID, viz. Revenue, Accountability, Probity, Information and Digitisation. She further stressed that apart from providing the Officer Trainees of 73rd Batch of IRS the  technical knowledge and core competence required in this technical service, they are also taught to find a balance between their twin responsibilities of tax enforcement and tax payer service.

Backgrounder-

National Academy of Direct Taxes (NADT) is the training institute for the new officers who entered into the revenue service via UPSC. In 2019 batch 19 States and 2 Union Territories.The largest number of Officer Trainees is 17 from Uttar Pradesh followed by 12 from Maharashtra, 12 from Delhi, 11 from Rajasthan, 6 from Tamil Nadu and 4 each from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in that order. Hindi is the mother tongue of the majority of Officer Trainees. The Officer Trainees in the batch also speak Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, Marwadi, Gujarati, Rajasthani & Urdu. 20.8% of the Officer Trainees are from rural background and   79.2% are from urban or semi-urban background.

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