Long delays in income tax refunds have prompted the Finance Minister P Chidambaram to intervene. The Finance Minister has told his taxmen to get cracking and speed up the refunds.

He wants the taxmen to monitor all refund cases every month starting from June for the next six months and clear all the pending refunds. However, tax officials are clueless about the number and the amount of pending refunds but they say that the problem is gigantic.

For instance out of the 2.62 crore returns filed 1.16 crore returns are yet to be processed and around 25 per cent of these returns or roughly 29 lakh returns would have a refund demand.

Tax revenues are pouring in but the pile of tax returns that the government has to pay is also growing. This year's refunds will be much more than last year's Rs 37,000 crore, so the government needs to speed up the process of refunding taxpayer's money.