The Income Tax department has served a notice to Karnataka Chief Secretary, Ms. Ratna Prabha, to explain the payments made to contractors during January-March 2018. The IT department suspects that the payments made by five government departments of the state to contractors may be utilized for 'election purposes'. The letter dated 6th April was sent from the desk of Director General of Income Tax BR Balakrishnan. It states that intelligence received by the department indicates that several big payments have been made to private contractors from some of the departments of the state government during the last quarter of the financial year 2017-18 (January-March) and they are meant to be used for election purposes. The letter goes on to ask the Chief Secretary to submit details of all the payments (between January- March 2018) made by the departments of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, Revenue, Energy, Public works, Water Resources to private contractors whenever the amount paid is above Rs 25 lakhs, along with the details of TDS. The letter also asks the Chief Secretary to submit details of payments to the same contractors in the previous financial year (2016-17). The Chief Secretary has reportedly intimated to the IT department that they received the communique late on Friday and her officials will submit the details by Tuesday.