NEW DELHI: The department of revenue in the finance ministry has written to the Corporate Affairs ministry seeking clarification as to how it has unilaterally extended the tenure of

Sunita Kejriwal

, a senior Income Tax official on deputation to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (

SFIO

). Sunita is the wife of Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal.

Her tenure at SFIO, a revenue department official said, was complete a few months ago and she was given extension without concurrence from her parent organization, the Income Tax. As per service rules, tenure can be extended only after seeking approval of the revenue department.

The Income Tax is itself facing shortage of officers and had some time ago written to the

Department of Personnel and Training

(

DoPT

) for recruitment of 18,000 more officials.

More than 10,000 pieces of information on black money parked by Indians abroad had been received by the government in the last one year. To deal with them, the finance ministry had expanded investigation units of Income Tax and created new departments, including Directorate of Criminal Investigation. The new I-T investigation unit also has been given the mandate of creating an armed and a marine unit for special operations to deal with tax evaders and criminals. The staff strength of DCI alone is proposed to be 500, all drawn from Income Tax.

This comes at a time when Arvind Kejriwal is facing a notice from his cadre demanding dues of Rs 9.2 lakh. Kejriwal is still to respond to the notice and technically continues to be a government official in the Indian Revenue Service.