NEW DELHI - The BBC did not provide a "convincing response" to Indian tax authorities in the past and the current survey on the organisation was connected to transfer pricing rules and diversion of profits, a senior Indian government official said on Wednesday.

Tax officials searched the BBC's premises in Mumbai and Delhi for a second day on Wednesday.

The income tax survey was not vindictive or "done out of a sense of pique", Kanchan Gupta, Senior Adviser at the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, told Times Now news channel.

The BBC told employees in an internal note on Wednesday that

India is looking into questions about the BBC's structure, activities and tax status.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra, Sudipto Ganguly, Rupam Jain and Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Toby Chopra)