One of the amendments moved by Digvijaya Singh related to

a clause which gave powers to an Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, rather than the Commissioner as prescribed earlier, to order searches. He said junior officers should not be given such powers since the Income Tax Department is already notorious in terms of corruption.

Yechury's two amendments related to a clause linked to political funding.

The amended Finance Bill, which contains provisions for taxation, will now have to be considered again by the Lok Sabha, which can either accept or reject the amendments. If it rejects the amendments, the bill is deemed to have been passed by Parliament.

Jaitley also responded to questions over changes proposed to the Income Tax laws and asserted that any source who reports about any tax evasion, cannot be allowed to be identified.

The Finance Minister said IT authorities will conduct searches on the basis of "satisafction note" which will only be dislcosed to the Courts and not the target of the investigation.

The provision is aimed at protecting the whistleblower which can be a trade union leader, a disgruntled employee or a dissatisfied partner.

His assurances, however, did not cut ice with the Opposition which kept asking questions.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram's suggestion that the "satisfaction note" should be shared without disclosing the source of information was rejected by Jaitley, who argued that sharing of the note could be used to track the source of information.

"Nobody can search without satisfactory note.

Satisfactory note cannot be made available to the target of the investigation," Jaitley said.

He emphasised the changes in the Finance bill are against "economic offenders" and for protection of whistle blowers.

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(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)