New Delhi: Dispelling impression of government glossing over tax liabilities of cricketers, the Centre on May 7 asserted in the Rajya Sabha that it was pursuing a "pro-active" policy in this regard to mop up Rs.3.81 crore tax dues from 33 such players.

"The impression that we are not pro-active is wrong. We are pro-active. But, we have to be pro-active as per the Law of the land," Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said responding to supplementaries during Question Hour.

He said the Income Tax department was pursuing all these cases and had fixed strict norms for their disposal by its Apellate Authority.

Earlier, Minister of State for Finance Gingee Ramachandran said the 33 cricketers included Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, Nikhil Chopra, Mohammed Azharuddin, Sunil Joshi, Saurav Ganguly, W V Raman and Nayan Mongia.

Those who did not have any tax dues include Sachin Tendulkar, S S Das, V V S Laxman, Venkatesh Prasad, S Sriram, Kiran More, S Venkataraghavan and Sunil Gavaskar, he said.

He, however, said the IT department did not maintain separate details of tax dues of sports personalities.

Assuring the House that there was no laxity on the part of the department, Sinha said premises of several players and their relatives had been searched and documents seized were under examination.

He said the duty of the IT department was to collect tax and not to defame people.

PTI