Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Anna Hazare both came down on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal during the Delhi Assembly poll campaign. Modi promised to credit Rs. 15 lakh in everyone’s account. Instead of doing that, he wore a suit costing Rs10 lakh. During the UPA rule, the AAP leader raised issues of rape and corruption, and held protests, but now he was keeping quiet when rape cases in Delhi have increased by 30 per cent. Anna Hazare too slammed the Narendra Modi government for its “failure” to bring back black money stashed away abroad. As the rumblings of his forthcoming agitation is getting louder, Hazare’s anti-corruption movement has been out on a limb after his close aides, first Arvind Kejriwal and now Kiran Bedi, decided to take the plunge into politics.
Inspite of Modi’s tall promises, people still have to pay bribes to get even the smallest of tasks done. Appointment of the Lokpal (ombudsman) in every district would have reduced corruption by at least 50 per cent in the country. Modi’s six-month tenure as Prime Minister and his failure to implement the Jan Lokpal Bill was quite disappointing. Hazare rebuffed suggestions that he had been “soft” on the BJP during his ‘India against Corruption’ campaign in 2011 which was directed against the Congress-led UPA government and had commanded a groundswell of popular support. He does not know whether popular strength will be more or less during his forthcoming agitation as compared with 2011. But he will agitate and protest against unhealthy ill indented government. Hazare reiterated that he would begin his campaign for a corruption-free India in Delhi soon after the polls in the capital. The agitation is expected to especially corner the BJP government over the Land Acquisition Law, whose amendments have purportedly made Hazare unhappy and which the Narendra Modi government has passed by means of an ordinance.
Jaitley said this was because since the evidence of black money stashed away by Indians was outside the Indian shores, the government must get evidence first from other countries, using the various treaties that New Delhi entered into with them. BJP might have said the names will become public, but again this is an eye wash as we all know these names would never be disclosed and as we the Indians have very short memory and forget the promises made to us. Some opposition members demanded that the government reveal the identities of the perpetrators right away, since they were already being talked about in the media. Even on social media, people are asking for their share of money as Modiji promised them to deposit it in their accounts. In all his pre-poll rallies, the Prime Minister said Rs.85 lakh crore was stashed in banks abroad. Now the Prime Minister says he does not know about it.
The finance minister earlier announced that of the 627 names of Indians holding bank accounts overseas, which were furnished to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope, 427 had been identified. Out of that, he added, 250 had admitted of having such accounts. Now the question is, who verified with these account holders and what is the guarantee that all those who agreed having accounts are having any black money, for business purposes, many must be having accounts in Swiss banks, how government is going to differentiate them? While Modi government was to constitute a Special Investigation Team to probe the black money issue, prior to that the panel already had these names. All the 627 accounts in the list are at an HSBC Bank branch in Geneva and the details were secured from the French government. The data was actually stolen by a bank employee, as a result of which the Swiss authorities had declined to help in any manner. As regards to HSBC, the bank said that if the Indian authorities get a no-objection certificate from the account holders, it could then share the relevant details.
BJP is hitting a blind wall as to what to do with this information, just to misguide people. India has no official estimates of illegal money stashed away overseas, but the unofficial ones range from $466 billion to $1.4 trillion. Anyways, Black Money was just a political gimmick; most of the black money is right here in India-in real estate and gold. It is not possible to bring back black money from abroad as the rules of the respective country cannot be changed from here, also most of the money in foreign banks is white and belongs to diamond merchants and businessmen. Incentives to expose black money in India can bring out a lot of black money. Anyways, one of the election planks of BJP was fight against corruption and stashing of money “to its logical end”, and even a SIT was formed immediately after Modi government came to power. Now citing treaty, protection of the corrupt is sought.
BJP should keep in mind that the general public is not interested in the nuances of political manoeuvres and visits by foreign dignitaries; it should get into their minds that promises made are being broken and if those promises refer to money in amounts of lakhs, the BJP will not like the backlash.
