Times of India: New Delhi: Thursday, July 17, 2014.
Senior lawyer
Ram Jethmalani on Wednesday alleged that a section in the NDA government
doesn't want his campaign against black money to succeed, and threatened to
expose them.
"There
are certain people in the government who are scuttling my fight to bring back
black money from abroad. I don't want to say anything further or take names.
But very soon I will write about it," Jethmalani told reporters. Though he
refrained from naming any one, the veteran lawyer claimed some people do not
want names of those with black money stashed in foreign banks to be made
public.
Jethmalani
said he would raise the issue before Prime Minister Narendra Modi that people
in his government are creating obstacles to unearth black money.
The senior
lawyer was addressing the media alongside activist Madhu Kishwar on an ongoing
inquiry under Foreign Contribution's Regulation Act (FCRA) against her
organization Manushi Sangathan.
Both
Jethmalani and Kishwar blamed the BJP-led government for "continuing with
harassment meted out to Manushi by the previous UPA government".
She said her
organization had filed two RTI applications and sent three letters asking the
Director, FCRA, for reasons for ordering an inspection of Manushi accounts,
only to be rebuffed.
Citing a TOI
report, Kishwar maintained while her organization is transparent. "The
real culprits are NGOs which brazenly flout FCRA rules and don't even bother to
file their annual returns. For instance, as per TOI report NGOs get over Rs
11500 crore in foreign funds annually but only 2% of the 20 lakh- odd NGOs
operating in the country file annual returns with the government."
Demanding the
government to come clean on her RTI queries, Jethmalani and Kishwar said,
"We expect a Narendra Modi led government to end the culture of secrecy,
vendetta and high handedness. Instead, it should practise the kind of
transparency, lawfulness and honesty it expects from citizens.
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