PAC Wants Details of Case Against RV Pandit’s Son

25 Aug 2002
Rajesh Ramachandran
Times News Network


NEW DELHI: Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) — currently probing the handing over of official defence ministry documents to Samata party financier R V Pandit — has sought an ‘‘action taken note’’ from the department of revenue on the alleged tax anomalies by a company owned by Pandit’s son.

Pandit senior is a close aide of defence minister George Fernandes and Samata party leader Jaya Jaitly. Earlier this year, he wrote a controversial pamphlet on the ‘coffin scam’ defending Fernandes and attacking the Comptroller and Auditor-General.

He also paid the fees of an expert witness from Britain, who was flown in by Jaitly to testify on her behalf at the tehelka hearings. The PAC had stumbled upon an audit paragraph referring to alleged tax anomalies by M/s Frontier Trading, a company owned by Pandit’s son, Vasant R Pandit.

The PAC wrote to the finance ministry on August 8, requesting the department of revenue to inform the PAC secretariat about the action taken on an audit objection raised by CAG regarding duty exemptions granted to Frontier Trading.

The ‘‘action taken note’’ was due on July 15 on the audit para referring to Frontier Trading’s classification of mattresses. A duty of around Rs 40 crore was imposed on Frontier by Mumbai customs commissioner (import) M C Thakur on August 31, 2001, for wrongly classifying imported luxury mattresses as magnetic acupressure treatment instruments and thereby claiming lower customs duty.

But the case has already gone in favour of Pandit’s son. R V Pandit had presented a case on behalf of his son to the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) on October 5, 2001. Within 20 days, the CBEC issued a clarification nullifying Thakur’s order. Pandit’s presentation was made to the chairman (excise and customs), member (customs) and joint secretary (customs).

Frontier proprietor Vasant Pandit told The Times of India, ‘‘Dad is my guarantor. I hadn’t gone to the board, Dad presented the case on my behalf.’’ He said everything is above board and he got speedy redressal from the board simply because he is an honest tax payer.