Income Tax 'surveys' at BBC offices end after over 58 hours
New Delhi, Feb 16: The Income Tax department's marathon "surveys" at BBC's offices ended on Thursday, after clocking over 58 hours in total, as officials prepared an inventory of financial data from select staffers and collected digital and paper data.
The operation that began at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) offices in Delhi and Mumbai around 11:30 am on Tuesday has ended in Mumbai and will be wound up at Delhi by tonight, sources said late on Thursday.
Tax authorities have made an inventory of the available stock, recorded the statement of some staffers and have impounded some documents as part of the survey action that continued for three days clocking about 57-58 hours, officials told PTI.
The survey was carried out to investigate issues related to international taxation and transfer pricing of BBC subsidiary companies, they had said.
The I-T teams, it is understood, sought answers on financial transactions, the company structure and other details about the news company, and copied data from electronic gadgets as part of their task of collecting the evidence.
Opposition parties have denounced the I-T department action against the London-headquartered public broadcaster, terming it "political vendetta".
On Tuesday, the ruling BJP had accused the BBC of "venomous reporting" while the Opposition had questioned the timing of the action that came weeks after the broadcaster aired a two-part documentary "India: The Modi Question" on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the 2002 Gujarat riots.
While there has been no official statement from the Income Tax department on the action, the BBC has said it was cooperating with the authorities.
A BBC staffer in Delhi said they were broadcasting their news like usual and the company has informed them that it is cooperating with the authorities.
The Supreme Court last week dismissed a plea seeking the imposition of a complete ban on the BBC in India in the wake of the controversial documentary, terming the petition "entirely misconceived" and "absolutely meritless".
Another set of petitions challenging the government's decision to block the documentary's access on social media platforms will be heard in April.
On January 21, the government had issued directions to block multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the documentary.
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Anura Dissanayake wins Sri Lanka's presidential election
Colombo (PTI): Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Sunday was declared winner of the Sri Lankan presidential election by the country's Election Commission after an unprecedented second round of counting of votes.
Dissanayake, 56, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party's broader front National People’s Power (NPP), defeated his closest rival Sajith Premadasa of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).
Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe was eliminated in the first round after he failed to become within the top two in the vote list.
NPP said Dissanayake will take oath on Monday.
Earlier, the Election Commission ordered a second round of counting after no candidate secured over 50 per cent votes needed to be declared the winner of Saturday's election.
Dissanayake will be the country's 9th president.
No election in Sri Lanka has ever progressed to the second round of counting, as single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes.
