PM promises action to bring back black money

Three days before his government presents the Union Budget, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday assured Parliament that “everything would be done” to bring back the unaccounted black money hoarded abroad by Indians. He also said the government might call political parties to seek “constructive suggestions” on this contentious issue.

Black money has become one of the major talking points of the Opposition parties, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has taken a few steps to get the account details of money stashed abroad, it is under fire for not taking effective steps to bring back the money and reveal the names of the tax defaulters.

Even as his government is in a tussle with the Opposition over the issue of corruption, the prime minister on Thursday tried to take them on board over the issue of black money, saying, “We are one with the Opposition.” But he also reminded the agitated Opposition that the issue was not new. It is not a four- or five- year-old problem, the PM gently reminded the House.

But on two other issues — the 2G policy and the Antrix-Devas deal — he was aggressive. While in the Lok Sabha he defended the 2G spectrum allocation policy, he pointed out in the Rajya Sabha that the Antrix-Devas negotiations actually started in March 2003 and continued till the next year.

“The Leader of Opposition (Arun Jaitley) made several observations about the Antrix-Devas agreement. He asked about who Forge Advisers were and what their credentials were. This question is better posed to his own party leaders who were in the NDA government and to the then prime minister. The first discussions between Forge Advisers and Antrix and Isro were initiated in March 2003 and May 2003, respectively, and continued throughout 2003 and 2004. Forge Advisers signed an MoU with Antrix in July 2003. All this happened when the party to which the Leader of Opposition belongs was in power and led the NDA government,” Singh replied.

Singh also defended the telecom policy of first-come-first- serve while reiterating that “there is nothing that we will not do in order to clean up our public life”. The PM pointed out that “there is tremendous growth in the telecom sector” and said the telecom policy, which was pursued since 1999, paid “rich dividends”. Singh admitted that “the fault lay with the implementation”.

On Commonwealth Games, 2G and other scams, the prime minister reiterated his commitment not to protect anyone, saying, “If there is a scam, it must be dealt with. Law of the land will punish the wrongdoers.”

On the issue of price rise too, the PM defended the government’s approach and said, “The policy is to ensure that we control inflation but in a manner that does not hurt the growth of employment opportunities.”

If we have a ham-handed approach, we could have killed the growth process which is the only source of providing jobs to youth.” Singh cited the price rise issue as a problem but attributed it to reasons “beyond control”, like drought of 2009, global oil price rise, natural calamities and world food situation.