Country’s top tax administration body -- Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has six members out of which three have retired and the fourth member, B D Bishnoi (Member, Administration), is retiring today. Today onwards the effective strength at the Board will get reduced to two members. Even these two members are retiring in next 60 days.

It may be underlined that the posts of Member (Investigation) and Member (Income Tax and Computerisation) fell vacant in Fabruary this year with the retirement of Gopal Mukherjee and Rajendra Kumar respectively whereas Ajit Kumar Srivastava (Member- Revenue and Taxpayers Service) fell vacant in June. Now the CBDT will have a Chairman and only two members to run this board. Curiously, the remaining two members-- Shabri Bhattashali (Member, Audit and Judicial) and Arbind Modi (Member- Legislation) will retire in next sixty days. In case it failed got get new members on board in next 60 days the board chairman Sushil Chandra will occupy the driver’s seat without any member around to run the business of the board.
 
In fact, Revenue Department failed to initiate the process of filling up these crucial positions on time and posts were advertised on July 04 with August 03 as last date for submission of application. Interestingly, while submitting applications the prospective candidates have no idea about the number of vacant positions as advertisement did not disclose how many posts will be filled through the process.