Cash seizures in North-East already crosses 482% of that of 2014 Election

Guwahati, April 9, 2019:

Cash seizures are a relatively common phenomenon during election time in India and North-East India is no exception to that. Investigation Department has revealed that cash seizures of Rs. 1.21 crores were made during General Elections of 2014 by the agency in North-East.

In comparison, during the current election process, cash seizures by the Directorate are already 482% of 2014 and stand at Rs. 5.84 crores for the period from 12 March to 4 April. Cash seized in just 27 days of election time enforcement is more than 50% of unexplained cash seized in the whole of FY 2017-18 and even exceeds seizure amount in the entire pre-election period of FY 2018-19.

Since the announcement of General Elections 2019 on 12 March, Directorate of Income

Tax (Investigation), North-East Region has been on an intense intelligence and enforcement

drive to counter flow of black money during the elections. Over 160 IT sleuths have been

deployed at strategic locations across North East, including Air Intelligence Teams at 12

airports. This has resulted in all-time high cash seizures of unexplained money during an

election period in North East.

As a first, the Directorate has also initiated an investigation into hundreds of suspicious cash deposits and withdrawals above Rs. 10 lakhs through banks across North-East and is being assisted by Financial Intelligence Unit of India, RBI and 68 banks in this mammoth exercise.

The Directorate is going to use ‘Big-Data’ mining and analytics tools to identify high-risk

transactions. It is expected that the investigation of these transactions may unearth substantial black money.

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