Karnataka university wins 14-year tax battle, recovers Rs 700 crore using RTI

After a 14-year-long struggle, the Belagavi-headquartered Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has recovered Rs 700 crore in frozen corpus funds belonging to the institute from the Income Tax department. The funds were frozen in 2012-13 after the Income Tax Department issued a notice to VTU demanding payment of Rs 250 crore in income tax from the time the university was established.

The Income Tax Department argued that VTU had not obtained tax exemption under Section 12(A) of the Income Tax Act and therefore had to pay the tax dues. The institute had challenged the matter in court but without success.

The university finally succeeded in recovering the assets by using information obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. VTU Vice-Chancellor S Vidyashankar said, “We came to know that the university had applied for tax exemption under Section 12(A) as early as 1999.

However, there were no documents available to prove this. Finally, we filed an RTI application before the Income Tax Department and obtained the 1999 entry register. Through this, we are now recovering our university’s money.” The vice-chancellor said the university has decided to deposit the money in a nationalised bank for 10 years.

From the eleventh year onwards, the interest income generated from the deposit will be used to pay the salaries of the staff.