This is the second such government-Infosys project that has run into trouble.
Highlights
- Summons announced as portal remained shut for two days citing maintenance
- The online tax portal was launched by the company in June
- This is second such government-Infosys project that has run into trouble
Here are 10 developments in this big story:
The "summons" was announced after the portal remained shut for two days in a row citing maintenance. The Income Tax department, a part of the Finance Ministry, said in a tweet that the Infosys CEO would be asked to explain why two months since the launch of the new e-filing portal, the snags have not been resolved.
The Infosys CEO has to explain to the Finance Minister "why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved", said the tweet. It pointed out that the portal had not been available since Saturday.
On Saturday, the company said the portal was "currently inaccessible due to planned maintenance". Yesterday it cited "emergency maintenance" until around 9 pm, when it announced that the portal was up and running.
A day after the launch of the portal in June, the Finance Minister had tweeted Infosys and its co-founder Nandan Nilekani asking for grievances and glitches to be resolved and asserting: "Hope Infosys and Nandan Nilekani will not let down our taxpayers in the quality of service being provided."
Mr Nilekani had replied on June 9 that Infosys expected the portal to stabilise "during the week", and was working to resolve the glitches.
But as users kept complaining of problems with the portal, Ms Sitharaman called a meeting with key Infosys officials on June 22 and asked the company to address all issues without further loss of time, improve services and redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely.
Salil Parekh and other company officials at the meeting "acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal", an official statement said.
Last week, Ms Sitharaman said she had been "constantly reminding" Infosys of continuing technical glitches in the e-filing portal. "I have been reminding Infosys constantly, and (Infosys head) Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me with assurances that next couple of days they will sort out majority of problems," she had said.
Infosys won a contract in 2019 to develop the next-generation tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds. Till June this year, the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for the portal.
This is the second such government-Infosys project that has run into trouble. Infosys had also developed the GST Network (GSTN) portal to facilitate the payment of GST (Goods and Services Tax). The software major was criticized over the GSTN portal's speed.
