The Income Tax Department will share the PAN and bank account details of any entity with any of the 10 investigating and intelligence agencies, including the CBI and NIA, under the Integrated Anti-Terrorism Forum NATGRID. An official order stated this. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a July 21 order that the information agreed on a bilateral basis, including permanent account number, tax deduction and collection account number (TAN), bank account details, income tax returns and tax deduction at source Will be shared with 10 agencies.
How will information be shared?
Information with central agencies will be exchanged through the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID). A robust system is envisaged to locate suspects and prevent terrorist attacks with access to data and confidential information such as immigration, banks, individual taxpayers, air and train travel on a real-time basis.
- These 10 agencies are the following
- Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
- Directorate of revenue intelligence
- Enforcement Directorate
- Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs
- Cabinet secretariat
- Intelligence Bureau (IB)
- Directorate General of GST Intelligence
- Drug Control Bureau
- Financial intelligence unit
- National Investigation Agency (NIA)
These agencies are authorized to obtain real-time NATGRID data under the earlier legal system. As per the order, CBDT and NATGRID will sign a memorandum of understanding to finalize the latest information sharing arrangement. A senior official said that there is already an agreement to share information related to PAN between the tax department and Natgrid. The new step is an initiative to share data in a better and confidential manner among all investigative and intelligence agencies so that they can better understand the situation and effectively counter armed, financial or cyber attack before the country.
The Natgrid project started after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. That attack brought to light that security agencies had no system to obtain real-time critical information. On April 8, 2010, the Cabinet Committee on Security approved the Natgrid project costing Rs 3,400 crore.
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