Ram Jethmalani (file photo)Even in his nineties, Ram Jethmalani continues to make news. An ace criminal lawyer and a long-time parliamentarian, the acerbic Jethmalani has taken on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of bringing black money stashed abroad by Indian citizens abroad.
However, the real fight is between Jethmalani and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is also a leading light of the Supreme Court bar. Both were Law Ministers under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and had locked horns both in the cabinet and in the courts.
Jethmalani, who was once the treasurer of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has trained his guns on Jaitley for not doing enough to bring back the unaccounted money sent out through hawala route. But Jaitley robustly defends the actions of the government arguing that it has to go through the legal route to force offenders to reveal the foreign accounts maintained.
Before the general elections, Jethmalani had convinced the then prime ministerial candidate Modi and then BJP President Rajnath Singh that only political will was needed to bring back the billions of rupees stashed abroad. The BJP had even said if all the money was recovered, each Indian would get Rs. 15 lakhs, and that the recovered black money could substantially reduce India's foreign debt.
Modi's staunch supporter Baba Ramdev too had launched a national campaign on similar lines. They had all criticised the UPA government and Manmohan Singh of not doing enough to bring back the country's money.
The first decision of the Modi cabinet was to form a special task force headed by a retired supreme court lawyer to suggest specific ways to tackle the scourge of the economic system. The government also passed a law, which made it mandatory for Indian citizens to declare details of their foreign assets and funds, under the pain of imprisonment and heavy fines. September 30 was the deadline.
The Income Tax department recently announced that the window kept open for undisclosed funds had 638 declarations, disclosing Rs 3770 crores as undeclared income under the new black money law. About 60 per cent of this money would be recovered as Income Tax and penalty. The CBI had told the Supreme Court once that a guesstimate had put the black money abroad as over Rs 30 lakh crores. However, Jethmalani had put it at Rs 90 lakh crores.
However, Jailtey has said he was taking measures to prevent generation of black money by insisting on bank transactions in areas prone for black money generation such as real estate, share transfers, gold and silver purchase and award of government contracts. He also insisted that Modi's war against black money is part of an agenda of the G20 grouping of the world's largest economies and that he was promised by world leaders such as American President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, among others for cooperation in preventing the flow of Indian black money into their countries.
Jaitley has also directed income tax department to identify hawala dealers and recover huge blocks of unaccounted cash kept by them. A series of raids in Bengal yielded more than Rs. 50 crores of cash.
Still, Jethmalani is unconvinced that his friend Modi, who had helped him get elected to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, was doing enough. He alleges that Modi is under pressure from lobbies, which do not want the guilty to be punished. While Modi has refused to reply directly to Jethmalani, the Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he does not bow down to anybody's pressure while governing the country, and has given examples of how auctions for coal, telecom and radio spectrum were done in the most transparent manner.
Tailpiece: The department of personnel has reminded ministries to send the list of posts for which appointments can be made without interviews. the department is trying to implement the promise made by Modi on Independence Day to abolish interview for low level posts in the government.
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