New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday alleged that the three names revealed by the Bharatiya Janta Party government in the Supreme Court in connection with black money in foreign accounts had been released selectively to protect powerful people.
Arvind Kejriwal, the chief of the Aam Aadmi Party, said he had revealed the same names two years ago but the government was deliberately shielding powerful people on the black money list.
“We want the government to say whether all the names that we disclosed earlier are in the list or not. The list of all foreign account holders should be revealed and there should be uniform action against the guilty,” Mr Kejriwal said.
The party said that two years back it had disclosed the names of several powerful people including Ambani brothers, Motech Software, Reliance Industries, Sandeep Tandon, Anu Tandon, Naresh Kumar Goyal, Burmans and Yashovardhan Birla in connection with the bank accounts in the foreign banks.
The party demanded that the government should clarify whether the other names mentioned by it feature in the list of black-money holders or not. Income Tax Department had raided a few of those whose names had appeared in the party’s list, the AAP said.
The party said, “On November 9, 2012, we had disclosed the statements made by three individuals – namely Parminder Singh Kalra, Vikram Dhirani and Praveen Sawhney – before Income Tax authorities, when their premises were raided. These three individuals admitted to the offence.
Surprisingly, their names do not appear in the list of three people, whose names have been disclosed by the Finance Ministry today. Why? As per our information, action is being taken against those on the list selectively.
Whereas harsh actions (like tax raids and prosecution) are being taken against some, the powerful ones are being let off. Why did the central government disclose only these three names? Does the rest of the list contain names of those who are close to the BJP? The BJP is believed to have spent thousands of crore of rupees in its election campaign first for the Lok Sabha elections and now on Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections. People suspect whether the list contains names of those who provided funds for the election campaign,” the party questioned.
In its charter of demands to the NDA government, the Aam Aadmi Party asked the Centre to immediately disclose the names of all account holders, complete investigations in all cases in a time bound manner and take strictest action against all guilty.
It also demanded that the government immediately stop illegal routes to stash money abroad and initiate prosecution against banks involved in soliciting illicit money and transferring it abroad through hawala.
