 "Rs 15 lakh in bank accounts a 'chunavi jumla' no more?")
The success of the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), which has had people declare unaccounted income worth Rs 65,200 crore is helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi government claim it has fulfilled one of its key Lok Sabha poll promises — the crackdown on ‘black money’.
The party hopes this success would mitigate some of its embarrassment on its failure, until now, to meet its other promise — to deposit Rs 15 lakh in the bank account of each Indian after recovering this ‘black money’.
On Sunday, BJP President Amit Shah termed the Income Declaration Scheme, 2016, as unprecedented victory in Narendra Modi government’s fight against black money.
While Modi, in his 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, had promised Rs 15 lakh in the bank account of each Indian after a crackdown on black money, Shah, in early 2015, had termed the promise a “chunavi jumla”, or an election slogan. Recently, Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said the promise of Rs 15 lakh in bank accounts had become an albatross around the government’s neck.
The success of the IDS, 2016, has come at a good time for the party as it prepares for key state polls in Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Punjab, Goa and Manipur in early 2017.
Shah claimed that in “barely two-and-a-half years of its tenure, the Modi government secured for the exchequer black money, undeclared income and undeclared deposits worth Rs 1.40 lakh crore.
Consistent with Modi government’s recent decision to devote policies and programmes for the farmers and poor, Shah said the government would spend this money on the welfare of villages, poor farmers and youth. Shah said the success of the scheme was a result of the corruption free government provided by Modi and the subsequent pressure built on evaders of tax and hoarders of ‘black money’.
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Shah said the Income Tax department, through its search and survey campaigns, recovered Rs 56,378 crore as undeclared income and Rs 1,986 crore in seizures in this duration. Further, it has secured Rs 16,000 crore from those who do not file their income tax returns through the Non-Filers of Monitoring System mechanism.
Additionally, it was assessed that foreign bank HSBC had accounts worth Rs 8,000 crore in the names of Indians; this money has been recovered. Likewise, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had reported Indians to have stashed Rs 5,000 crore in tax havens abroad, which has been recovered, too.
Shah said the Modi government was also successful in recovering Rs 4,100 crore worth of Indian money from foreign sources through its scheme for the year 2015. He said Rs 2,00,000 crore secured from neutral and transparent auction of coal blocks was evidence of corruption free governance. He said the government has also stopped leakage and siphoning off of subsidies meant for the poor.
It remains to be seen how much of this money finds its way into people’s bank accounts by the time 2019 Lok Sabha polls take place. For that might determine whether Modi and his government are reelected or forgotten like the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was in 2004 despite its good work in sectors like aviation, road construction and telecom.