The Cabinet on Thursday approved the proposal for creation of 20,751 additional posts in the Income Tax Department in various cadres. Of them, 1349 posts will be in the Indian Revenue Services (IRS) cadre and 19,402 posts in the non-IRS cadres. 

A decision in this regard was taken at the cabinet meeting chaired by the prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Thursday. Briefing reporters after the meeting, Finance minister P. Chidambaram said this will help the Income Tax Department collect more revenue and provide better services to tax payers .

An additional expenditure of 449.71 crore per year is likely to be incurred on creation of additional posts and upgradation of some existing posts. Mr. Chidambaram said the expenditure involved in the creation of posts will be compensated by the increased revenue of over 25,000 crore per annum generated as result of this restructuring .

In another major decision, the Cabinet approved Special Recruitment Drive to fill up the backlog in reserved vacancies of the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Mr. Chidambaram said over 48 thousand posts out of 75 thousand identified vacancies were filled under the drive last year.

All Ministries and Departments have been requested to make concerted efforts to ensure that the remaining backlog reserved vacancies are filled up.

The Cabinet also approved classifying Malayalam as a Classical Language. With this Malyalam will now be entitled to get benefits of two major annual international awards for scholars of eminence and a Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Languages.