Andhra Pradesh high court directs liquor body to pay tax

Hyderabad: A division Bench of the AP High Court on Tuesday directed the AP Beverages Corporation Limited to pay Rs 200 crore income-tax by March 31 and not later than April 15. Despite pleas by the advocate general for a stay on grounds that the state was under President’s Rule, the Bench, headed by the Chief Justice, was not inclined to grant a stay.

APBCL had contended that since it was a government body, it was not liable to pay income-tax. Earlier, on the directions of senior IRS officer B.V. Prasad Reddy, the bank accounts of APBCL had been frozen and a show-cause notice for prosecution had been issued. Income-tax officials had collected Rs 6.5 crores after attaching bank accounts of APBCL with SBH and Axis Bank.

The order is significant in the backdrop of the Governor being given a presentation on the state government finances. The state will now have to make an urgent provision to pay Rs 200 crore to the I-T department.

 

The HC has also permitted petitioners to file additional papers in a PIL seeking directions to call for fresh bids for the Machilipatnam deep water port project at Gilakaladinne. T. Uma Maheswar Rao and eight others moved the plea stating the state government had first called for global tenders in 1995 and had cleared the bid of Seaways Shipping Services Pvt Ltd.

 

The award of the project to Seaways was, however, rejected by the CMO’s and the entire project had come to a standstill. The government then awarded the Rs 1,100-crore project to a Maytas-led consortium in 2008. Later, Maytas too expressed its inability to work on the port project.