The CBDT has issued a letter dated 15.12.2015 stating that the Revenue Secretary has directed that henceforth any notice/letter/communication issued by any officer under Department of Revenue; including CBDT, its directorates and field formations; to the tax payers, members of public should invariably contain mention of email address and office phone numbers, of the officers signing such, communications/notice/letters for facilitating tax payers’ electronic interface with the Department. The CBDT has requested everyone to ensure that the above directions are strictly followed.
One of the range heads under whom I worked as an assessing officer chided me for giving my office telephone number (being an extension of general number) stating whether I invited the assessees or the representative to have a contact direct with them. I congratulate the Revenue Secretary to take such a bold step to publicly give the contact telephone and e-mail addresses much to conservative views of the bureaucratic bosses’ ideas.
This is really great and going to help the tax payer in a big way. More often than not, the authorities do not write their email address or contact phone number. This needs to be extended to mobile phone number at least where phone bills are reimbursed by government or mobile phone is provided by government or both.
In fact this needs to be emulated by all departments and offices. Let there be an administrative audit to see if the officer has failed to save avoidable personal visits of the citizen. It will provide relief everywhere. In particular, in big cities, it will help reduce traffic, vehicular traffic apart from reducing opportunities of corruption. Government and citizen will both gain by avoiding unjustified ex-parte orders. Yes it is a simple but great step. Its implementation has to be vigourous as well as rigorous to show sincerity of effort, to say the least.