With the Appointments Committee approving the appointment of four new members in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT)—including two lady officers—women have a fair representation in the six-membered apex body mandated to guide and decide on direct tax collection matters.

With Anita Kapur as the director general, CBDT, there are now three women in the entire board while one member’s post still lying vacant.

The four members appointed to the board are Rani Singh Nair, Surabhi Sinha, Atulesh Jindal and SM Nigam. The other member is Arun Kumar Jain.

The CBDT DG and the members HT contacted did not offer any comments.

With just two months left before the presentation of the NDA government’s first full Budget, a buttressed CBDT is now expected to work full steam to garner resources to finance the many social sector mega schemes announced by the government.

The board level vacancies had impacted tax collection because of which there has been a shortfall in tax collection.

The new CBDT appointments are also expected to better aid the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its efforts to unearth and curb black money in India and abroad. The CBTD is the lead agency in the fight against black money.

With an aim of ushering in a better and non-adversarial tax regime, the CBDT on November 13—in a huge administrative exercise—had notified new jurisdictions and duties for its officers across its 18 zones. The effort was part of a cadre restructuring effort involving the addition of 20, 751 posts to the department representing a 27% increase from its earlier 57,793 posts.

For several years there has been a demand for additional manpower from the CBDT to handle the increasing workload with the rise in the number of assesses over the years.

In 2000-01, the number of tax assessees was 2.3 crore with a total revenue collection of Rs. 68,305 crore. In 2012-13, the number of assessees grew to 3.63 crore with a total revenue yield of Rs. 5,58,964 crore.