By Bhupen Goswami

Guwahati : Continuing its intense drive to attack unexplained cash during on-going election process, the Investigation Directorate of Income Tax, North East Region has so far made seizures of Rs. 7.33 crores from the date of announcement of polls by Election Commission. This massive haul during the brief period of last one month far exceeds cash seizures of Rs. 1.21 crores made by the Directorate during 2014 general elections and is already 605% of the total amount seized in the previous elections. It is significant that nearly 75% of seizures have taken place just in the past two weeks and include operations based on independent intelligence against moneylenders and interceptions at airports by the Directorate’s Air Intelligence Units across the 7 sister states of North East. Principal Director of NER, Shri Sanjay Bahadur held a meeting with all officers of the Investigation Directorate to deliberate strategies for further tightening election expenditure monitoring process in the upcoming 2 nd and 3 rd phases of polling in the region. Following that, Shri Subhrajyoti Bhattacharjee, Additional Director and Nodal Officer has repositioned officials from constituencies where polling has finished in the first phase and deployed them in the remaining poll bound constituencies. All the 12 Air Intelligence Units functioning under Shri Mrinal K. Das, Joint Director, will remain active across North East till 23 rd of April, the last poll dates in the region. AIU is also monitoring unscheduled and chartered private flights at all airports and Income Tax Surveillance Teams have asked state district authorities to alert them of helicopter landings in the districts. A Special Task Force is being constituted to investigate hundreds of suspicious bank transactions involving high value cash deposits and withdrawals.