Black money: Govt refuses to disclose names

The BJP's bid to censure the UPA government in the Lok Sabha for "failing" to bring black money back from foreign banks was rejected by the House on Wednesday. HT reports.War of words | Can't make account info public: Pranab | Govt not revealing names of 782 tax evaders: Advani

The BJP's bid to censure the UPA government in the Lok Sabha for "failing" to bring black money back from foreign banks was rejected by the House on Wednesday.

Senior-BJP-leader-LK-Advani-speaks-in-Lok-Sabha-in-New-Delhi-PTI

Contrary to the opposition's expectation, the government got the adjournment motion - moved by senior BJP leader LK Advani - defeated by voice vote.

The government also stood firm on its refusal to make public the information received from abroad about black money accounts.Replying to the debate on the motion, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said no Member of Parliament figured in the list of account holders abroad.

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Moreover, he said the government had succeeded in preventing the flight of about Rs 66,000 crore out of the country and checked tax evasion to the tune of Rs 33,784 crore.

The finance minister held that till now the government had received 36,000 pieces of information relating to money kept abroad.

"If I publish it, some country will say you violated the agreement and we will not share information in
future... We will dry up our source of information."

Earlier, Advani claimed that the government had failed to bring back an estimated Rs 25 lakh crore stashed away illegally in foreign banks and reveal identities of the depositors.

"Tell the world that we are willing to place all the cards on the table," he said.

"It will be a humiliation if we don't get to know them from our Prime Minister or our finance minister and come to know from WikiLeaks as (its owner) Julian Assange said at the HT Leadership Summit that he has the names and would reveal them in 2012."