The Income Tax (I-T) Department continued its survey at the offices of the BBC in Delhi and Mumbai for the second consecutive day on Wednesday, sources said.

The ‘survey’ operations, which had commenced on February 14 at around 11:30 am, continued the whole day and even throughout the night, and are currently going on at the UK’s official broadcaster’s premises in Delhi and Mumbai, the sources said.

The I-T Department is carrying out the survey in view of the British public broadcaster’s alleged “deliberate non-compliance” with the Transfer Pricing Rules and its vast diversion of profits.

On February 14, the sleuths arrived at the BBC offices located at the National Capital’s KG Marg and Mumbai’s Kalina Santacruz for the survey.

Sources said there has been persistent non-compliance with the above-mentioned rules for years. As a result of the same, several notices have been issued to the BBC. However, the BBC has been continuously defiant and non-compliant and has significantly diverted its profits, sources said.

The sources further said that the above exercise, conducted by the tax authorities, is called “survey”, not search or raid as per the provisions of the Income Tax Act. Such surveys are routinely conducted and are not to be confused to be in the nature of a search/raid, said the sources.

The key focus of these surveys is to look into the manipulation of prices for unauthorised benefits, including tax advantages. These surveys have been undertaken due to BBC’s persistent non-compliance of the norms, making it a repeat offender.

In this case, sources said BBC has been “non-compliant under transfer pricing rules; persistent and deliberately violative of transfer pricing norms; and deliberately diverted a significant amount of the profits and have not followed the arm’s length arrangement in the case of allocation of profit.”

Accordingly, the surveys have been conducted with a view to investigating BBC’s violation of the Transfer Pricing Rules and its diversion of profits.

After the I-T Department survey, the sources in the United Kingdom government said they are monitoring the developments closely.

“We are closely monitoring reports of tax surveys conducted at the offices of the BBC in India,” UK government sources said.

Meanwhile, BBC has said it is cooperating with the Income Tax Department, which is conducting a survey at its offices in New Delhi and Mumbai.

“The Income Tax authorities are currently at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and we are fully cooperating,” the BBC News Press Team said in a statement.

Meanwhile, reacting to the development, the Congress criticised the Centre for the Income Tax Department’s survey at the BBC offices alleging that due to its high-handedness the press freedom index has fallen to 150.

Addressing a press conference here, Pawan Khera, party’s media department chairman said, “In fact, India has a dubious position of 150th in the Press Freedom Index. 135 journalists in India were arrested, interrogated, or detained from 2014 to 2020. (As per Free Speech Collective) 37 Journalists have been killed in India since 2014 as UNESCO observatory of killed journalists.”

The development comes weeks after the BBC released a documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi – ‘India: The Modi Question,” which caused controversy.

The Centre had issued directions for blocking multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the controversial BBC documentary on PM Modi.

The Supreme Court had on February 3 directed the central government to produce original records relating to its decision to block the BBC documentary.