New Delhi/IBNS: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Wednesday promised that his party will take exemplary action against those who have destroyed democracy "when the government changes"  after the party received a Rs. 1,800 crore income tax notice which it called "tax terrorism".

The fresh tax notice is for the assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21, and includes penalty and interest.

"When the government changes, action will definitely be taken against those who are destroying democracy. And the action will be taken in such a manner that no one will have the courage to do all this again. This is my guarantee," Gandhi wrote in a post on the microblogging platform X.

The country's key opposition Congress party received a blow ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha election with the Income Tax department serving notice of over Rs 1,800 crore to it for alleged discrepancies in tax returns for previous years.

The notice was issued soon after the Delhi High Court rejected petitions by the Congress party challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings against it for a period of four years.

Gandhi alleged central departments such as the income tax are working at the behest of the BJP.

The Congress is preparing to fight a long legal war to scrap the tax demands.

Congress leader Ajay Maken said the BJP has in the past few years got donations from thousands of people, and their income tax should also be calculated.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said that while the I-T department has served notice to the grand old party, the ruling BJP has been spared.

"IT (Income Tax department) has now given a notice of a total of Rs 1,823 Cr to the Congress party. They have already withdrawn Rs 135 Cr from Congress party's accounts, which is a fund collected by us through crowdsourcing," Kharge said in a post on micro-blogging site 'X'.

"Despite the fact that public information of the Election Commission clearly shows that, 1297 people have deposited ₹42 Cr to BJP in 2017-18 without mentioning their name and addresses," he wrote.

Earlier the Congress alleged that the Narendra Modi government had frozen the bank accounts of the grand old party just weeks ahead of the general elections in the country making it troublesome for them to fund the poll campaigns.