Senior IRS officer K V Chowdary has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the top policy making body of the Income Tax department.

Chowdary, a 1978-batch officer, took charge at his office in North block in the Finance Ministry. He will have a tenure of three months.

His name had been cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The officer was till now working as the Member (Investigations) of the direct taxes revenue collection board.

Incumbent Chairman R K Tewari retired after being at the helm for five months.

Chowdary has had one of the longest stints in CBDT having held the charge of Member (Audit and Judicial) in the board before taking over the investigations charge.

He has earlier served as the Director General of I-T (Investigations) in the national capital where he headed a number of high-profile tax probes, including the 2G spectrum allocation case and the HSBC Geneva taxpayers list along with a number of cases dealing with blackmoney and tax evasion.

CBDT has six members apart from the Chairman and is the apex body for framing policy and administrative issues related to direct taxes and the Income Tax department.
Taking forward the recent Budget announcements towards implementation in the I-T department will be his immediate responsibilities.