IIPM Director Arindam Chaudhuri arrested for Rs 23 crore tax evasion

IIPM Director Arindam Chaudhuri arrested for Rs 23 crore tax evasion

Arindam Chaudhuri

Arindam Chaudhuri

Chaudhuri’s colleague, Gurudas Malik Thakur, director, was also arrested under Section 89 of the Finance Act. Both are sent to 14 days judicial custody

New Delhi: Arindam Chaudhuri, Director of Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) was arrested by the CGST South Delhi Commissionerate on August 21 under Section 89 of the Finance Act, as media reported.

The arrest was made over alleged undue claim of Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT) of service tax credit of about Rs 23 crore.

Chaudhuri’s colleague, Gurudas Malik Thakur, director, was also arrested under the same section and sent to 14 days judicial custody.

Both were produced before duty magistrate Jyoti  Maheshwari in the Patiala House Court.

Investigation is under process, and is likely to cover other properties held by Chaudhuri and his company in Delhi, other cities and overseas, the sources added.

Chaudhuri and Thakur will next be produced before the court on September 3, 2020.

This is not Chaudhuri’s first brush with the law. He was arrested on March 14 — and subsequently granted bail — for allegedly submitting a forged medical certificate when police asked him to join an investigation last year in connection with a 2016 case, as an Indian Express report.

In 2018, an indirect tax tribunal upheld the entire service tax demand against IIPM saying there was no scope to exclude “academic courses” conducted by the institute from the levy of the tax demand which including penalty and interest could be over Rs 200 crore, sources told The Times of India. They added that Chaudhuri owns 90 percent of the closely held company while the rest is held by his wife.

IIPM Director Arindam Chaudhuri arrested for Rs 23 crore tax evasion

IIPM not shutting down, only changing model: Arindam Chaudhuri

Arindam Chaudhuri

Arindam Chaudhuri

New Delhi : (IANS) Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) founder Arindam Chaudhuri on Friday denied the educational institution was closing down and said it had only changed its model to enter into technical collaboration of knowledge-sharing with various institutions in India as IIPM 2.0.

“IIPM 2.0 is a new initiative where any institute can tie up with us by sending an application for knowledge partnership. Then our faculty will teach students our five specialty courses — economics, business strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship and personality development,” Chaudhuri told IANS, adding he had announced about the initiative in May 2014.

He added that IIPM would only collaborate with other institutes once it is satisfied with the other courses being taught at the said institutes, which would call themselves IIPM Centre for Excellence.

He said that this would reduce costs of running campuses.

“We are changing our model of existence in every city except Delhi,” he said. “Old IIPM campuses will not take any new students; the batch that would pass out in October would be the last one. The new batch will join our partners. We plan to have 30 such centres of excellence across the country,” he added.

The institute’s website stated that all IIPM campuses now only had old students and these campuses were being shut down as and when old batches finish their courses.