I-T action on Congress accounts kicks off row

The Congress on Friday claimed its bank accounts were "frozen" over a pending tax dispute, but said later in the day that they had been "unfrozen", although tax officials familiar with the matter who asked not to be named insisted that what the Congress termed freezing was the placing of a lien on the accounts, which they added was standard procedure in tax recovery cases.

The Congress said it was unable to operate its accounts on February 13 and 14 - and that this was lifted after it approached the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) on February 14. According to Congress member Vivek Tankha, a Rajya Sabha MP who represented the party before the tribunal on Friday, he was told by ITAT that there would be no freeze, but that there was a lien.

The ITAT will next hear the Congress's petition in the matter on February 21, he added. A lien is a sort of a hold on an amount that is owed. In this case, the Income Tax department has a lien of Rs 115 crore on the Congress's accounts that was put through two letters sent by the department the managers of Bank of Baroda and State Bank of India on Tuesday, according to documents shared by party treasurer Ajay Maken on Friday.

While Maken said the Congress did not have "Rs 115 crore in any bank account" and that it would have to encash some of its fixed deposits, a lien can be made on both current and savings account deposits as well as fixed deposits.

"We approaches the ITAT this (Friday) afternoon and the arguments were held in the open court between us and the Department of Revenue," said Tankha. "The tribunal has allowed us to operate our accounts with lien."