Black money: 'Nothing seems visible in near future', says Majeed Memon

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and well known lawyer Majeed Memon on Wednesday pulled up the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on its failure to fulfil its promise of bringing back the black money illegally parked abroad.

"It was Ram [Jethmalani] who had initiated the petition through the Supreme Court and got the SIT formed. But he alleges that he is not getting a proper response, whether the hearing takes place or not. The NDA Government is not cooperating in the matter and their responses being luke warm," Memon told ANI.

"Personally, Ram Jethmalani has made some serious allegations against the present Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley), which is not in good taste. But then, he says that the Finance Minister is protecting all the holders...as far as the promises of the NDA Government are concerned, during the Lok Sabha elections, they had given a time limit: that within 100 days, they will get the black money and each poor person in this country will have Rs 10-15 lakh in their account," he added.

Jethmalani had on Tuesday said that deliberate attempts were being made to stall the return of black money from abroad, adding that he supported BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's application before a court on the matter.

"I am the saddest person on earth seeing the deliberate attempts to stall the matter. Everything is being done as fraud to this country and this court. I support Subramanian Swamy's application in this matter as he has some very important points to share," he said.

Swamy has in his plea suggested some measures for bringing back the black money.

The Supreme Court had earlier asked the SIT to file a fresh status report by today on the progress made by it on black money probe.

Prior to this, it had asked the SIT to consider suggestions of senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, who had filed a PIL in 2009 on the black money issue, on the way forward to bring the illegal money stashed in banks abroad.

The SIT on black money had been formed by the apex court last year.