As foreign investors lobby hard against the Rs 40,000-crore tax demand slapped on them, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said it was difficult for the government to intervene as they have lost the case before the appellate.

Jaitley said these overseas institutional investors have the option to explore further legal remedies.

A large number of such investors have been asked to pay Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT) for untaxed capital gains earned by them, but they have protested these tax notices and demands saying they were exempt from long-term capital gains tax and had never been subjected to MAT in previous years.

"Their expectation that having lost the case the state must now intervene, that looks a little difficult from my point of view... therefore they have the option of agitating their remedies in law," Jaitley said here last night at an event.

On the same matter, Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das told PTI in an interview in New Delhi that FIIs lost an appeal at the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) against levy of 20 per cent MAT on capital gains they made in years through March 31, 2015.

"If you are not satisfied with a particular judicial pronouncement, the answer is to go and appeal to a next higher judicial forum," he said. Jaitley said this year's Budget has provided for these investors to be exempted from MAT, but for the previous years they had gone to an appellate and lost the case.

"It may not be possible for any government after a court verdict, which is a transient court verdict, which is still subject to appeals, to intervene in those particular matters," he said.