(...Contd)

Even the Hon Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherji, is not without his quota of humour in his budget speeches. Paying compliments to himself for exempting totally pressure cookers from excise duty, he said, “Housewives in India, as elsewhere, have been complaining for some time about the rise in their expenses. As a measure of economising on their fuel bills without affecting the nutritional and, hopefully, the gastronomic value of what they cook, I propose to exempt totally pressure cookers from excise duties. They would now find someone else in their kitchens letting off steam.”
There have been occasions when official witnesses appearing before the Public Accounts Committees unwittingly made laughingstock of themselves. Once when Shri R. R. Morarka, Chairman of the P.A.C., voicing the concern of the public that there was a lot of petty corruption in the Income Tax Department, asked the official witness “Is that not so, Mr. .......” The official witness immediately retorted. “No, Sir. There is no petty corruption in my Department.”
There was an enterprising Chairman of the Board of Direct Taxes who somehow managed to get a copy of the questionnaire prepared by the Secretariat of the Committee and would come prepared with answers for all the questions seriatim. Finding that the answers come rather too fast, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee wanted to find out whether the official witness had any prior knowledge of the questions.
He, therefore, jumped over two questions and asked the third. The official witness speedily read out the answers for the first and second and when he was reading the wrong answers all in the Committee broke into laughter.
There was an Inspecting Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax who prided himself on his knowledge of shastras and particularly Manu’s Neeti Shastra. When an assessee in his charge was in arrears of tax, and had no property to be attached for tax dues, he issued the following order:
“According to Manu, wife is the property of the husband and, therefore, the I.T.O. should attach all property standing in her name as in law, it is the property of the husband.”
An Appellate Assistant Commissioner in an appeal filed by two famous film stars, allowed full relief from tax. A note was put up to the Commissioner suggesting that the A.A.C., while allowing the appeal, might have been influenced by factors other than the merits of the case, and therefore, an appeal should be preferred to the Appellate Tribunal. The Commissioner declined, observing, “Mr. (AAC) is fifty-four and beyond the age of temptations of the flesh. There is no allegation he got money.”