NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Direct Taxes CBDT ) is developing a dedicated portal for the investigation of those identified to have made deposits or large purchases not in line with declared income as a follow-up to Operation Clean Money , which was launched in the wake of demonetisation to crack down on black money.The proposal figured in discussions at a recent review meeting of the revenue department with Prime Minister Narendra Modi . “We are working on a dedicated portal,” a top government official aware of the deliberations told ET. “This will be for those identified as part of Operation Clean Money.”The portal will facilitate communication between individuals and tax authorities by way of the permanent account number (PAN). The department is looking to keep the process as non-intrusive as possible with an emphasis on e-assessment to keep human interaction to the minimum.The second phase of Operation Clean Money will focus on high-risk individuals who made highvalue transactions and will be subject to detailed investigations. The department has already identified more than 60,000 such persons, based on data analytics.The cases that are being taken up for deeper investigation deal with deposits as well as high-value purchases or sales. Black money continues to be a priority for the Modi government. A dedicated portal will ensure focused and nonintrusive interaction between tax authorities and suspected evaders, said the official.The Prime Minister was given a detailed presentation on Operation Clean Money and various actions taken by the apex direct taxes body.Operation Clean Money was launched soon after demonetisation to ensure that those with undeclared incomes were brought into the tax fold. The department identified about 1.8 million persons who were contacted through SMSes and emails and asked to explain their deposits, pay tax or declare past undisclosed income through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.Of these, 1million responded in the everification process. The department managed to get about 9.5 million new taxpayers into the tax net in FY17. Total returns filed in the year earlier had amounted to 52.8 million, an increase of 22% from FY15.The trend was not just restricted to returns. The number of applications for permanent account numbers (PAN) jumped after the demonetisation announcement on November 8 as the department issued a diktat to banks that all accounts had to be linked to PAN.The department received about 173,000 daily applications for PAN against an average 83,000 before that. On some days, this rose to as much as 300,000. The department allotted 46.5 million PANs between November 8, 2016, and March 31, 2017.