In its bid to weed out non-performing and corrupt officers, the Central government has on November 26 forced 21 more tax officials to retire on alleged charges of corruption, professional misconduct and possession of illegal cash. With this the total number of such officials has gone up to 85 since June 2019.

This time round action has been taken against corrupt CBDT officials in the rank of income-tax officers (ITO). This seems to be the fifth round of operation clean-up undertaken this year. With this, till now 85 officers, including 64 high-ranking tax officers from both CBIC and CBDT have been compulsorily retired under Fundamental Rule 56(J).

This rule empowers the government to initiate action against corrupt officials on the basis of available evidence. The same retirement benefits are admissible to these compulsorily retired officials as applicable to officers upon retirement on normal age of superannuation.

Sources informed that one ITO posted in Rajahmundry was forced to retire because she was caught receiving Rs 150,000 bribe. Another official in Visakhapatnam was trapped by the CBI, which recovered Rs 75,000 from his office in addition to the recovery of Rs30,000 during the operation.