Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill: Govt should not chase silver bullets

The Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill makes little policy sense and if passed into law will definitely be challenged as unconstitutional

Drafted last year in the aftermath of Vijay Mallya refusing to return to India to face criminal charges, the Cabinet has finally decided to table the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill in the upcoming session of Parliament to show that history won't repeat itself with the present case of Nirav Modi and his associates. February was littered with news reports of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raiding and seizing several thousand crores' worth of assets based on the fraud allegations. But, as the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, rightly pointed out last week, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act does not allow these