NEW DELHI: Rich people who use tax exemption on agricultural income to evade taxes might be on government's target. The income tax department has shortlisted for scrutiny nearly 50 persons with suspicious farm income more than Rs 50 lakh each, according to a BloombergQuint report.Last year in December, former Minister of State for Finance Santosh Gangwar had revealed in Parliament that the government was verifying if taxpayers who reported farm income of over Rs 1 crore in nine years to March 2016 were genuine.Agricultural income is exempt from tax in India. But many times people use this exemption to convert black money into white. According to experts, some land-owners claim tax exemption on the basis of fake payment slips from vendors, thus proving that they had farmed the land before selling it.But now income tax department has a very effective way to find out such tax evaders. The department accesses satellite imagery from Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO ) of the piece of land for specific time periods and if there are no standing crops in that period, it is proved that the assessee is trying to avoid taxes.Recently, an assessee claimed exemption on capital gains he made by selling his farmland. However, exemption is given only if the land has been used for agriculture purpose for at least two years before the sale. Suspecting false information, the tax officials contacted ISRO and procured satellite images of the land, taken over a period of three years. Based on ISRO's scientific appraisal, the department was able to prove that the land was barren and not used to raise crops.As the government tries to formalise the economy and widen the tax net, there has been a talk of even taxing rich farmers , a step that would require a constitutional amendment.Niti Ayog, the government's think tank, has made a case for including farmers in the tax ambit. In its draft three-year action plan, it had proposed that agricultural income should be taxed at the same threshold as personal income,"There should be no distinction between urban and rural. The threshold for taxing rural agriculture income should be the same as urban income. However, rural agriculture income taxed could be an average of three years as it is subject to weather fluctuations," Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy said in April this year.But Finance minister Arun Jaitley had denied that the government was planning to impose tax on agricultural income, and dismissed the suggestion of Niti Aayog.