Junagadh cobbler, who received IT notice, gets relief; matter to be re-inquired

Junagadh: In a much needed relief to a poor cobbler here, the Income Tax department has taken back its notice served to him to explain the deposit of Rs 10 lakh in his account.

The IT department has taken the step to check the discrepancy, if any, on the intervention of local BJP MLA Mahendrabhai Mushroo, who also knows the cobbler for years. An IT official of Junagadh said that as the cobbler claims that he did not have a PAN card, it would be re-checked and the PAN number of the notice would be verified. He did not rule out the possibility of discrepancy caused by confusion with the name (somebody else of the same name).

‘We have taken back the notice for now for further inquiry. It was issued from our Delhi office and we only served it,’ he said.

The notice to the cobbler, who despite being poor is well-known to many and repairs old footwear on a footpath in M G road area of this historic city of Saurashtra region of Gujarat for many years, had become a ‘talk of the town’ of sorts here.

The IT notice regarding transaction to the tune of Rs 10 lakh in the cobbler’s account during the demonetization in November-December last year, was received by Mansukh Makwana 4 days back.

Though the matter, which is yet to be investigated in detail yet the notice to Mansukhbhai, who is in to his family profession for years, and claims to earn hardly a meager Rs 200 to 250 a day which according to him was not even sufficient to make the both ends of his household meet, had drawn many sympathisers to him.

Local BJP MLA Mahendra Mushroo was also one of them. He went to meet him on his footpath shop and after assuring him of taking up the matter with the local IT officials, he also met them to pursue the matter which led to taking back of the notice for inquiry.

The primary information reveals that Mansukhbhai has two bank accounts of which one is under PM Modi’s famous Jan Dhan Account scheme (with local Bank of Baroda branch). The other is with Indian bank. It was not yet clear as to which of these two accounts have been used for the Rs 10 lakh transaction claimed in IT notice. Notably, the cobbler, whose son is also in to the same profession, has no PAN card in his name so far.

DeshGujarat