The Supreme Court on Thursday granted a week’s interim protection to NewsClick against tax recovery demands over “unexplained cash credits”, LiveLaw reported. The court, however, dismissed a writ petition filed by PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt Ltd, the company that runs the news portal, and asked it to approach the Delhi High Court.
Representing NewsClick, senior advocate Kapil Sibal told the bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and KV Viswanathan that the company only had Rs 28 lakh in its bank account and had received a demand notice of Rs 3.6 crore, the report said.
In the writ petition filed under Article 32, NewsClick argued that it only dealt in cheque transactions and not cash exchanges. It told the apex court that the regulation under which income tax authorities had raised the tax demand was not applicable in the present case as it dealt with only cash credits.
Disposing of the plea, the Supreme Court said it was not inclined to entertain NewsClick’s petition and asked the company to approach the high court. While granting interim protection to NewsClick for a week, the court said, “We make no comments on merits on the assertions made by the petitioner...Let there be no coercive action against the petitioners for one week.”
In August 2024, the apex court stayed any further recovery of income tax until the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal had disposed of the portal’s appeal.
In November last year, the court had also directed NewsClick’s banker ICICI Bank to not release any more money to the income tax department, and further allowed the portal to use its two accounts for daily operations.
The income tax department had “surveyed” the portal’s office in September 2021, following a raid by the Enforcement Directorate earlier that year . In December 2023, NewsClick alleged that its bank accounts were frozen weeks after a “ crackdown by the Delhi Police Special Cell”.
Newslaundry has reported on the case against NewsClick from the start. See a timeline of events here and the rest of our reportage here.
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