Mumbai : Business leader Rahul Bajaj said he wondered as to how will the government progress on the black money issue after Switzerland backed out of supporting India at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
“Where is Switzerland? What happened at NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group)? The Swiss president said they support India, but what happened at Seoul? They backed out,” he said when asked about the government’s fight on black money.
India was not able to muster enough support to get admitted in 48-member NSG due to opposition by several countries including Switzerland. In the lead up to the NSG meet at Seoul last week, however, Switzerland had publicly declared support to India.
The European nation, famous for an opaque banking system, is also believed to be home to bulk of Indians’ unaccounted black money stashed abroad.
“Every country has its own regulation and you cannot force Switzerland to do what you want,” Bajaj said, adding that the government is doing whatever it can in this matter. He hit out however at the BJP’s pre-poll promises to get back all the black money as being “wrong”.
“The kind of promises people were made before the elections were wrong. They cannot be achieved. You cannot get billions of dollars, there are none,” he said. Referring to the statement by BJP chief Amit Shah on depositing Rs 15 lakh in every citizen’s account, Bajaj said such a thing is not a possible. “You can’t get Rs 15 lakh in everybody’s account.” Black money has been a subject of intense debate in the country and one of the first decisions of the new government in 2014 was to set up a special investigation team to look into the matter.
