The central government announced on Monday that it has sacked 22 Income Tax officials for allegedly corrupt practices and other serious irregularities, the Hindustan Times reported. “The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has compulsorily retired yet another 22 senior officers of the rank of Superintendent/Administrative Officer under Fundamental Rule 56 (J)... due to corruption and other charges and CBI traps,” the board said.

According to NDTV, the sacked officials are KK Uikey, SR Parate, Kailash Verma, KC Mandal, MS Damor, RS Gogiya, Kishore Patel, JC Solanki, SK Mandal, Govind Ram Malviya, AU Chhapargare, S Asokaraj, Deepak M Ganeyan, Pramod Kumar, Mukesh Jain, Navneet Goyal, Achintya Kumar Pramanicik, VK Singh, DR Chaturvedi, D Ashok, Leela Mohan Singh and VP Singh. They belong to tax units of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Meerut. They face corruption charges for seeking bribes ranging from a few thousand rupees to several lakh.

The sacked officials have been forced into retirement. The action is in consonance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s effort to purge “black sheep” in the tax department, a promise he made in his Independence Day speech and reiterated later.

“Some black sheep in the tax administration may have misused their powers and harassed taxpayers, either by targeting honest assesses or by taking excessive action for minor or procedural violations,” Modi had said. “We have recently taken the bold step of compulsorily retiring a significant number of tax officials, and we will not tolerate this type of behaviour.”

The government had in June pushed 27 high-ranking Indian Revenue Service officers into compulsory retirement after they were accused of corruption.

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