Infosys MD and CEO
Salil Parekh and other key company officials on Monday met with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to discuss the continued glitches in the new Income Tax portal even after over two months of launch.

Parekh and other Infosys officials were summoned by the Finance Ministry to explain the reasons why the portal continues to be plagued with issues – the site has remained unavailable for the last two days due to maintenance. 

Also Read: Glitches in the new income tax portal and the role of Infosys | Explained

“Ministry
of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh, MD &CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to
explain to hon’ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new
e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact,since
21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the Income Tax department tweeted.

In a tweet
late on Sunday, the software giants said that emergency maintenance of the portal had been
concluded and the site is live. “The emergency maintenance of the
@IncomeTaxIndia portal has concluded and the portal is live. We regret any
inconvenience caused to taxpayers,” the Infosys India Business Unit said.

Also Read | PF rule change: How to file your EPF, EPS nomination digitally

Infosys developed
a new income tax e-filing portal ‘www.incometax.gov.in’, which launched on June
7. The site had a rough start from launch, with users complaining of a number of
tech glitches and other functions that were either unavailable or working slow.

The issue is of particular importance as the deadline for filinf tax returns approaches in just over a month. The last date for filing had already been pushed from the usual July 31 deadline, and if the issues continue to persist, the government might have to reschedule it once again. 

With users
complaining of the glitches since launch, Sitharaman had on June 22 called
a meeting with key Infosys officials to review the issues. Parekh and other officials had “acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal” at the meeting.

Quoting the
IT department tweet, senior government advisor Kanchan Gupta said, “This is
the second major GoI project @Infosys has messed up. The first was #GST portal.
Now it is #IncomeTax portal. Infosys bags GoI projects using L1 route which
limits options. Clearly lacks either capacity or intent to deliver. Two
‘failures’ in a row cannot be coincidence”.

‘L1’ route is
the lowest bidder in the tender for a contract.

The GST
Network (GSTN) portal, which is used for GST payments and filing returns, had
also been developed by Infosys. The company faced a lot of backlash for
glitches in the GSTN portal as well.