Heat is on economic offenders, says Jaitley

Responding to supplementaries during Question Hour, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the extradition process takes a lot of time though some countries extend help in sending back such people fast by deporting them. 

To ensure that such people “cannot hide” in other countries, the government is working on having agreements with maximum number of nations, he said. 

When asked by Saugata Roy (TMC) as to what steps the government has taken to bring back “IPL man” and “Kingfisher man” back, the Finance Minister, without taking names, said Rs 8,040 crore worth assets has already been attached by various  enforcement agencies. 

Roy was asked by the Chair not to take names in the House. Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha that the total value of currency notes in circulation came down by a quarter to Rs 11.73 lakh crore post demonetisation. 

There were Rs 16.14 lakh crore in circulation before the note ban. Meanwhile the Income Tax department has identified 17.92 lakh persons whose tax profiles were not in line with the cash deposits made by them during the demonetisation period. 

The department has initiated ‘Operation Clean Money’ on January 31, 2017 to leverage technology and data analytics for e-verification of cash deposits made during the demonetisation period, stated Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

The alleged ‘ill treatment’ of army jawans by the higher ups and controversies pertaining to the deaths of few such personnel in recent past figured prominently in the Lok Sabha on Friday even as Defence Minister Manohor Parrikar said a mechanism is being evolved about superiors handling their ‘sahayaks’ (sub-ordinates and helper).

K Venugopal of Congress raised controversies pertaining to video clips of jawans alleging ill-treatment by seniors while raising supplementary queries during Question Hour. He also demanded an inquiry into Delhi police giving a wrong information to the family of a personnel about his death. 

To Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre’s remarks that those are individual views of the jawans in the video clips and not any collective opinion, provoked angry protest from several Opposition members including Gaurav Gogoi and Sushmita Dev (both Congress) and Mohammed Salim and P K Biju (both CPI-M). 

On various complaints about ‘Sahayak’ system, the Defence Minister said a mechanism was being worked out to address the complaints. “I am sure, we will find a solution,” he said. To a question, Bhamre said “surgical strikes” carried out by Indian armed forces in September 2016 had given a “huge morale booster for the rank and file of the armed forces.”

The I-T department has developed a mobile app for paying taxes and tracking refunds and is considering issuing PANs on real time basis using Aadhaar biometric details. “Income Tax department is considering issuing of Permanent Account Number (PAN) on a real-time basis using Aadhaar’s e-KYC facility. The proposal is at an initial stage of consideration,” Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Friday. Besides, he said a mobile app “for paying taxes online has been developed.”