Jaishankar: BBC tax ‘survey’: All entities operating in India must comply with laws, Jaishankar says | India News

NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday firmly told his British counterpart James Cleverly that all entities operating in India must comply fully with relevant laws and regulations.
Jaishankar’s response came after Cleverly raised the issue of BBC tax searches with him during a bilateral meeting. Cleverly is in India to attend a crucial meeting of the G20 foreign ministers on March 1 and 2.
Last month, the income-tax department had conducted marathon survey operations at the offices of the BBC in the national capital and Mumbai.

The I-T department said that evidence collected during the survey at the offices of the BBC has shown that tax has not been paid on certain remittances which have not been disclosed as income in India by the foreign entities of the group.
The survey had triggered a bitter war of words between the ruling BJP and the opposition parties. The survey revealed that despite substantial consumption of content in various Indian languages (apart from English), the income/profits shown by various group entities is not commensurate with the scale of operations in India.

The IT survey of the BBC offices had come weeks after a massive controversy over a documentary by the British state-funded broadcaster on the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The ministry of external affairs had termed the documentary as “a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative”. The Centre had asked YouTube and Twitter to block videos of the BBC documentary.
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