The amendment has been proposed by the partys Rajya Sabha deputy leader Satish Agarwal at the instance of party President LK Advani, who had opposed the scheme when it was initially mooted. As per the current proposal the BJP would seek to add a new section to Clause 77 of the finance bill that deals with the scheme.
The amendment seeks to debar MPs, MLAs, governors, lieutenant governors and families of all of them from claiming benefit under the VDS, Agarwal told the Business Standard yesterday. The cut-off date would be January 1980.
Agarwal said the amendment would prohibit these categories of people from converting their black money into white. If the amendments were accepted, people like former communications minister Sukh Ram and his family members would not be able to benefit from the scheme, he said. He justified making 1980 as a cut-off year, saying that no major financial scandal took place at the central or the state levels before 1980. On why he did not include 1977-79 period, when the Janata Party was in power at the Centre and people like Advani and Agarwal were ministers, he said We cant cover the entire period. Number of corruption case have increased only after 1980.
