New Delhi: With the Centre announcing its apprehensions regarding declaring names of people having black money stashed away in foreign banks, Congress on Friday launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led coalition.
"Declare black money account holders or apologize to Congress for previous attacks," Congress leader and former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said.
Keeping its stand before the Supreme Court earlier today, the Centre had cited the violation of double taxation avoidance agreement signed by UPA regime as the reason behind its decision to not reveal the names of black money account holders as of now.
Khurshid rubbished the claims, saying, "This government should not repeat what previous government did. It is up to the current Indian government, either it should backtrack from the treaty or keep its promise with country."
Party leader and former Commerce Minister Anand Sharma agreed as he said, "They can not cite 1995 treaty. Even after that from 1998 to 2004 BJP was in power then why did they not make change in that period."
However, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters later in the day that the names of persons under investigation for having black money account will be made public once the charges are filed in the court.
"Swiss authorities will give details of bank A/Cs of persons who have been investigated by Income Tax authorities," he added.
Jaitley also said that India and Switzerland were discussing bilateral agreement for automatic exchange of information.
In the run-up to parliamentary polls, BJP had promised to bring back black money kept by Indians in overseas bank while targeting the UPA government for not taking effective action on the issue. After assuming power in May, the Narendra Modi government had pledged to fulfil its pre-poll promise.
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