Infosys faces heat from FM Nirmala Sitharaman as tech glitches mar new Income Tax e-filing portal

 







Infosys came under fire from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as users faced technical glitches in the new Income Tax e-filing portal, which went live on the evening of June 7. FM Sitharaman has asked Infosys and its co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani to address the grievances in a tweet.

Infosys was awarded the contract in 2019 after the bidding process with an outlay of Rs 4,242 crore. The project aimed to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and also expedite refunds.

The system went live on June 7 night and ran into glitches since then, with many users posting tweets tagging the Finance Minister.

In a tweet, Sitharaman said, “The much awaited e-filing portal 2.0 was launched last night at 20:45hrs. I see in my TL grievances and glitches. Hope @Infosys & @NandanNilekani will not let down our taxpayers in the quality of service being provided. Ease in compliance for the taxpayer should be our priority.”

This is not the first time one of the government portals developed by Infosys has faced glitches. In fact, both the GSTN and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) site are maintained by the company, and have been facing issues.

Infosys won the Rs 1,380 crore contract to build the GST portal in 2015. However, since the launch, the site has been facing issues. In March 2020, the Finance Ministry asked Infosys to provide a quick resolution for the persistent glitches in the GSTN portal.

In a letter to the company on March 5, the ministry said that the issues highlighted as early as 2018 are yet to be resolved and has led to the frustration of taxpayers.

The same can be said for the MCA website that Infosys maintained till last year. Infosys clarified that the company does not manage the MCA system since 2020. The company won a $50 million contract to maintain the MCA site for 6.5 years in November 2012, from Tata Communications.

However during the period the company was managing the site, there have been complaints. A Moneylife article states that the company secretaries (CS') chartered accountants (CAs), lenders and shareholders have complained about the site not being accessible on many occasions.

However, former Infosys executive Mohandas Pai defended the company. In a tweet he said, "Every large system like this will have issues! Most are at the users side too, takes time to settle down! User education, data input, data population,comments on design, etc takes time to settle down!"



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