November 27, 2014
Is the Govt willing to ban global participatory notes: Saugata Roy in LS
AITC MP Saugata Roy today spoke on the issue of black money in Lok Sabha. With a tinge of sarcasm, he left it to the conscience of the BJP to decide whether they should apologise for misleading the Nation before elections.
He also maintained, regarding the issue of bringing black money back, the question is not ‘whether’ but the question is ‘when’.
Full transcript of his speech:
Madam, we have had a long discussion on the issue of black money stashed abroad and Members have given very serious suggestions. The main complaint was that the Prime Minister during election campaign promised that he would bring back the black money and assured Indian people that they would get Rs 15-20 lakh per family.
Now I shall not waste the time of the House by asking the BJP to apologise for their false assurance to the people of the country and I leave it to their conscience to decide whether to do it or not.
I have only three concrete and brief suggestions:
The Black Money estimate is not there, it ranges from USD 500 to USD 2 Trillion. One billion means 1000 million or Rs 100 crore. So multiply it by 60 and we will know how much Black Money is there.
Now the biggest problem with Black Money is the money goes out of India and it comes back through the Mauritius route, what is known as round tripping. I want to ask the Finance Minister if he is prepared to ban global participatory notes through which people enter the share market to prevent the round tripping of black money.
Secondly Madam, much of the Black Money comes to India during elections. It is alleged that the ruling BJP – this is unconfirmed report – spent Rs 25000 crore in the Lok Sabha elections and subsequent Assembly elections. It may be correct, it may not be correct. Now my question is whether the Government is prepared to bring forward electoral reforms, so that there is a ceiling on the spending by political parties, instead of just a ceiling of the expenditure of individual candidates.
Lastly the plea, the Attorney General took before the Supreme Court and the Finance Minister took is that the present Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement has a Clause which is called the Confidentiality Clause. I want the Finance Minister to declare in this House whether he is prepared to revisit the Confidentiality Clause. The Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement is not necessary for all the countries; we have 92 such Agreements. Let us just tackle the tax havens and take away the Confidentiality Clauses from the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement.
I will end by saying this – the question is not ‘whether’, the question is ‘when’. Kab aap layenge?
Lastly, Jaitley ji, yesterday Anurag Thakur mentioned our Chief Minister’s name; it was uncalled for. We did not mention the name of the former Karnataka Chief Minister who was arrested by the CBI, we have not mentioned the name of the former BJP President who was arrested.
(Interruptions)
