The BJP will be marking November 8, first anniversary of the Union government’s decision to demonetise high value currency notes, as “anti-black money day” across the country.
Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley announced this as a priority programme for the party and its leaders as well as Union Ministers.
Congress calls it a black day
The BJP’s move comes as 18 Opposition political parties had announced their own programme of marking the day as a “black day” terming the decision to demonetise as “ill conceived and hasty”.
Mr. Jaitley said the Union government had a strong resolve against black money and the shadow economy and the decision to demonetise and the implementation of the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime were part of a long line of decisions taken by the government against black money.
“One of the first decisions taken by this government was to form the Special Task Force mandated by the Supreme Court but not implemented by the previous UPA government against black money. This was followed by legislative actions like operationalising the Benami Act that had been defunct for many years. This affected not just commercial businesses but also politicians. The government also moved against money stashed in tax havens across the world, and [was] reworking double taxation avoidance treaties used for round tripping money, which hadn’t been done since 1996,” he said.
‘GST a new transition’
“Demonetisation was a major step to squeeze cash-only transactions and a spur towards digitisation of transactions. The GST is a new transition after which generation of unaccounted cash will be difficult,” he said. “We [BJP] are ready to take forward the debate on the fight against black money,” he said.
On the Opposition terming demonetisation as “hasty and ill conceived”, Mr. Jaitley said, “The Congress had an adequate opportunity in power and I don’t recall a single step that they took to fight black money. They seemed to be reconciled to the shadow economy, it is understandable.”
“Those who have never fought black money were happy with the laundering of it and are dismayed at it being liable to tax via entry through the banking system,” he added.
“Confiscation of money was never the aim of demonetisation, squeezing the quantum of cash in the system, detecting sources of terror funding, counterfeit notes was,” he said.
