Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today asked income tax department to gear up for implementation of Direct Tax Code (DTC), which will replace the 50 year old Income Tax Act, from April next year.

DTC Bill is under examination of Parliament Standing Committee and will be effective from April 1, 2012, he said in his address to Chief Commissioners and Director Generals of Income Tax here.

"Therefore, department should prepare for transition from the Income Tax Act 1961 to the Direct Tax Code Bill regime," he said.

These would include various issues like redrawing of processes, rules, forms, training needs of manpower and the necessary infrastructure, he said.

The minister said this task should be completed in a mission mode to avoid any inconvenience to tax-payers and also to maintain continuity in revenue buoyancy.

Speaking on the Central Processing Centre, Bengaluru which has become fully functional, Mukherjee said that CPC Bengaluru has processed more than 85 lakh e-returns during 2010-11 and it would perform still better in this year.

Three more CPCs for tax returns are planned at Manesar, Pune and Kolkata, he added.

The minister expressed hope that their operationalisation in due course would give a fillip to the processing capacity of the returns of income with the department and help in processing the returns of income within 4 months of filing the return