Govt cites national interest to deny black money info

Times of India: New Delhi: Sunday, 07 December 2014.

The government has denied disclosure of information under RTI on how many requests it has made to other countries with which India has Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) or a Tax Information Exchange Agreement, citing national interest and confidentiality.

Oddly enough India as a member of the Global Forum for Transparency which has been set up to develop and comply with standards relating to investigations and combat black money by the G-20, has declared this information in a public forum.

According to the peer review report submitted by the government India, it received 97 requests between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2012. It sent 563 requests for information during the period under review including 386 for the first six months of 2012. CHRI's Venkatesh Nayak had sought information on the subject from 2011 to October 2014.

However, in response to RTIs, the finance ministry said that it could not disclose the information citing section 8(1)(a) and 8(1)(f) of the act. The sections forbid disclosure if the information is against national interest or if the information has been given by a foreign government on condition of confidentiality.

Pointing out this anomaly Nayak said the bar in the confidentiality clause in DTAAs was only about person-specific information and not for numbers adding that the government had already made this information public in an international forum.

"But when a citizen asks for the number of requests it has made to other countries and shows what is the public interest in disclosing such information, they invoke section 8(1)(a) and (f). So just like in the Ram Jethmalani case, the government thinks it is more loyally bound to foreign countries under its DTAAs and not to even the court or its own citizens in terms of transparency. These DTAAs are not ratified or even placed before Parliament," Nayak said.

Recently the Supreme Court ordered the government to hand over the names of account holders who have allegedly stashed away black money abroad.