Contesting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s arguments on writing off the loans of Vijay Mallya and amending the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said Jaitley misled the House on both issues.
He further said he is seeking various avenues to question Jaitley’s act. Twice during Yechury’s speech in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Jaitley made interventions to clarify the issues of “write offs” of non-performing assets and on the FCRA.
Talking to reporters here on Thursday, Yechury said as far as the tall claims of the Centre for recoveries of written off loans go, the facts speak for themselves.
“The conviction rate of wilful defaulters under this government was 1.14 per cent in 2015-16, even lower than 1.45 per cent in 2014-15. So much for the Finance Minister’s talk of written-off loans being recovered from wilful defaulters by this government. The Finance Minister may like to check his facts and tell the country how much of the written off loans his government has recovered. If not, written off loans are not just technical, it is the real money of the people being given by the government to crony corporates,” he said.
Yechury said the Finance Minister’s stand on FCRA was that the amendment was a technicality and not having any effect on the funding of political parties.
“This is yet again a sleight of hand. The FCRA was amended from retrospective effect not by introducing and debating a Bill in Parliament. The government, instead, brought an amendment to FCRA in February 2016 through the 2016 Finance Bill to avoid scrutiny. It amended Section 2(1) (j) (vi) of FCRA, 2010, by adding a proviso with retrospective effect. The Representation of People's Act bars political parties from receiving foreign funds, but after this amendment, they can receive funding from foreign donors which will bypass government scrutiny,” Yechury said and claimed that the amendment was brought in retrospectively because the BJP was charged with illegally receiving foreign funds for political activities from UK-based Vedanta Group from 2004 to 2012, thereby violating FCRA provisions.