The Central Board of Direct Taxes has speeded up the process of promoting more than 200 officers to the commissioner level for redressing appeals piling up before the department, a top CBDT official said today. 

"Currently, there are 2,50,000 appeals pending before commissioners. We have already disposed of 25,000 appeals during the first six months of the current fiscal," CBDT Chairman KV Chowdary told PTI. 

The prime reason behind the department's move is to speed up reddressals after it was asked by the government to dispose of appeals within one year, but it is unable to do so with existing resources, Chowdary said. 

He was attending an event at the Indian Merchant Chambers here today evening. 

"We are likely to appoint 204 commissioners from among existing officials. Most of them will be deputed to the appeal section, since a number of appeals are piling up and the department is unable to dispose them within the suggested period of one year. The file is pending with the department and shortly they will be promoted," he said. 

The department has taken an initiative for the refund of its assesses. 

"We have got an electronic banking refunding system as per which refund to the tune of Rs 50,000 will be directly transferred to the assessee's account," he said. 

The government as set a target of Rs 7,36,000 crore this fiscal from income tax alone. In the first half of the fiscal, the governent collected Rs 3,46,144 crore as against Rs 3,10,063 crore in H1 of last fiscal. 

Chowdary said a demand of Rs 6,00,000 crore has been generated at his department and a substantial portion of which has not been collected as yet. 

He also said the government has formed a departmental view committee to tackle those cases where there were contradictory views some of which are advantageous to the department and the remaining ones were disadvantageous. (PTI - BS)