Indian Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has summoned Infosys Ltd’s chief executive Salil Parekh to explain why software glitches in the new tax-filing website have not been fixed even two-and-a-half months after its launch.
The website hasn’t been available since 21 August, the income tax department said in a Twitter post, adding that Parekh will have to explain the reasons for the continued problems faced by the website’s users on Monday.
As users complained of various glitches after a fortnight of launch, Sitharaman, on June 22, called a meeting with key officials of Infosys to review the issues on the portal. The minister had then asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, and redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely.
In 2019, Infosys was awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds. Till June 2021, the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.
Union Cabinet on January 16, 2019, gave its approval for this project at an outlay of Rs 4,241.97 crore for a period of 8.5 years, including payout to the Managed Service Provider (MSP), GST, rent, postage and project management cost.
