Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday termed as “blackmail” his Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s comment that revealing the names of those who had stashed black money in foreign banks would embarrass the Congress.
“I don’t expect Arun Jaitley to make a trivial comment. He’s the finance minister of India. He’s not likely to make a trivial comment, but I think the purpose of that comment was to move from black money to what a friend of mine said blackmail’,” Chidambaram said in an interview to NDTV.
He claimed much of the work on the issue of black money was done by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, while the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was reaping the rewards.
Chidambaram said the NDA government’s affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on the issue of black money “clearly was a U-turn on the position the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) had taken”. He recounted how the BJP had criticised it when the UPA government had told the court under bilateral agreements, India couldn’t be asked to disclose the names until charges were filed or prosecution was launched.
“In fact, I remember a statement by then (prime ministerial) candidate Narendra Modi on February 17, when he said the finance minister was paying lip service to the cause and that when he came to power, they would disclose the names and bring back the black money in 100 days. So, nobody got the BJP wrong. The BJP does not have the grace to admit it did a U-turn, but that’s for the people to judge.”
He said the NDA government’s position in court, as well as that of the UPA government, was “the only right position you can take if you don’t want to jeopardise your bilateral treaties”. The former finance minister also faulted the claim of his successor, Jaitley, that the UPA government hadn’t disclosed any names.
“We disclosed 18 names to the Supreme Court and the court asked us to give those names to (lawyer) Jethamalani…those names were given to Jethamalani. Those are the only cases where prosecution or charges have been launched,” he said.
He added it was because of his efforts that the G20 final declaration had a paragraph on sharing information, specifically directed towards Switzerland and similar tax havens. “In fact, the Swiss, who usually attend the summit by invitation, conveniently absented themselves in the last meeting,” he said.
src:sify.com