#dnaEdit: The hullabaloo

It was feisty lawyer Ram Jethmalani’s 2009 petition in the Supreme Court about the need to retrieve money that Indians have illegally stashed in foreign banks that is causing so much excitement and embarrassment to the Supreme Court and the governments. The BJP-led NDA government has submitted a list of 627 foreign bank account-holders first to the Supreme Court-directed Special Investigation Team (SIT) and on Wednesday to the apex court. The court had handed it over to the SIT. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that the list of 627 was already with the SIT reveals confusion in the Supreme Court as well as in the government. There seems to be a communication gap. This is symptomatic of the manner in which the issue of black money, defined in this context as Indians stashing money in foreign banks, has been dealt with. There has been much confusion and embarrassment because the BJP-led NDA government was keen to score brownie points. It was keen to reveal either the names of some of the Congress leaders or those close to the party. The three names that were made public turned out to be disappointing because there were no politicians, especially from the Congress and its allies.

The question of black money has become entangled in political warfare. It was senior BJP leader LK Advani who had raised it in the run-up to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. This was also the time when the United States was pressuring Swiss banks to reveal the names of American account holders who were suspected to have stashed money to avoid taxes. This became an urgent issue in the US in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. The yoga teacher and political agitator Baba Ramdev made it an issue in 2011 after Anna Hazare  forced the question of corruption and the Lok Pal onto the national agenda. The Supreme Court on its part decided to take up the issue, and directed the government to institute a special task force to look into the matter. The NDA government responded by taking its first executive decision to set up the SIT which will work under the court’s supervision.

The legal complexity of the matter was not considered by the BJP when it was in opposition, but it is forced to reckon with it as it is now in government. Jaitley and attorney general Mukul Rohatgi clarified that bilateral treaty obligations made it necessary that the names of account-holders cannot be made public unless charges were framed against any one of them. Holding a foreign account in itself is not wrong. It is when the account-holder uses it for funnelling unaccounted money, which amounts to tax evasion, that he or she is liable to investigation and prosecution. The crux of the black money story that is being played out in the public sphere is that it should include names of politicians, especially the bigwigs of the Congress. The BJP and the Congress are both posturing, with the BJP threatening that the names of the Congress leaders are there in the list, and with the Congress daring it to disclose the names. It would seem that the issue would lose its sting if politicians are not implicated. The BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are vying with each other to win laurels by making black money the key issue of politics and morality. The questions surrounding black money are both technical and complex.