Greenpeace India summoned for tax hearing on June 12

When contacted, Greenpeace India Climate and Energy campaigner Vinuta Gopal confirmed that the organisation did get summons from the IT department for a tax hearing.

She said Greenpeace India is a charity and thus should be exempt from most taxes.

But the government has chosen to retrospectively remove its tax exemption on a number of items. “The tax bill may come close to '3 crore and the effect of this, therefore, would be similar to the government’s previous attempt to freeze Greenpeace India’s domestic accounts”.

She said even though Delhi high court has given Greenpeace India interim relief allowing to use domestic bank accounts, the government seems to be hunting for new ways to shut the organisation down.

Greenpeace India programme director Divya Raghunandan said, “Our response to this is simple. We will continue to campaign against air pollution and for cleaner environment for all Indians. These arbitrary attacks have only made us more determined to win our campaigns”.

It is learnt that on June 3, officials of sub-register office joint 1 (Chennai Central) have conducted inspection and checked the records.

They will be submitting a report shortly. Sources said the authorities have checked all the record books from the year 2006.

Ms Vinuta Gopal alleged that the team of investigators didn’t issue any notice in advance before conducting the inspection. “We just got a phone call about the inspection, but nothing in writing. When insisted, they orally said that they were here to investigate society status. Greenpeace India is a registered non-profit organization under Tamil Nadu Registration of Societies Act”.