Telugu IRS appointed as CBDT chief

Senior IRS officer K V Chowdary is tipped to be the new Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the apex authority of the Income Tax department.

The 1978-batch Indian Revenue Service officer is presently working as the Member (Investigations) in the CBDT and is expected to take over the new charge from August 1 after incumbent Chairman R K Tewari retires on July 31.

Tewari, a 1976-batch IRS officer, has been at the helm for the last five months after he took over the top post on March 1. Officials said the name of the new CBDT boss would be soon cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A few new members of the direct taxes revenue collection board could also be cleared during the same time.

Chowdary's stint has been one of the longest in the CBDT as he has earlier officiated as the Member (Audit and Judicial) before taking over the investigations charge, a post he occupied after serving as the Director General (Investigations) in the national capital where he was heading a number of high-profile I-T probes, including the 2G spectrum allocation case and the HSBC Geneva taxpayers list along with a number of cases dealing with black money and tax evasion.

The officer is also credited with initiating a host of new steps to enhance and fine-tune the intelligence and investigation set up of the Income Tax department. A number of high profile searches and raids were carried out by Delhi investigations unit of the department during his tenure. He has earlier served as the Chief Commissioner of I-T in Vishakhapatnam and Director (Investigations) in Nagpur.

The CBDT has six members apart from the Chairman and is the apex body for framing policy and administrative issues related to direct taxes and the Income Tax department.

Chowdary will have a tenure of three months at the top post before his superannuation and taking forward the recent budget announcements towards implementation in the I-T department will be his immediate responsibilities.

Chowdary is a native of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh.
- PTI