The Supreme Court has rightly decided not to make public the list of individuals holding accounts in foreign banks, despite compelling the Government to furnish the names to it. In so doing, it is only upholding its own judgment of 2011, where it had declared that any such disclosure, without a preliminary investigation into whether such accounts were prima facie illegal and in violation of treaties India has signed, would also be a violation of an individual’s right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. Further, it will be directly supervising such investigations, which are being carried out by the Special Investigative Team (SIT) constituted in 2011 (and reconstituted in May this year). This should help set at rest speculation that the Centre could try and protect the individuals named in the list — something which Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been at pains to deny. That is the correct position, given the confidentiality clauses in the various tax treaties India has signed with different nations. Violating them would have meant reneging on sovereign agreements, which no government can, or should do, without the gravest of provocations.

Indeed, that is the same reason why the earlier UPA government had also failed to disclose the information. The BJP had then politicised it and made it a major electoral issue. If the Congress is expectedly making political capital of the BJP’s refusal now, the BJP has no one but itself to blame. In fact, amidst the heat and dust of political campaigns, the real issue of black money — and the possibility of its retrieval — has been obscured by wild charges and exaggerated claims. The numbers floating around — from $400 billion to over $1.4 trillion — have never been confirmed by any rigorous estimate. It is a moot question as to how much money is lying in such accounts abroad, and indeed, how many such accounts are actually illegal and involve evasion of taxes at home. Hopefully, the SIT’s investigations of those named in the list — Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi has said that the deadline for investigation under the Income Tax Act into these accounts is March 31, 2015 — will help calm fevered speculation and bring back some sanity to the debate over black money.

The only workable and long-term solution to the problem of black money, of course, is plugging the source. This requires a reasonable, simple and transparent taxation system, as well as enhanced efficiency in tax collection and policing. The Direct Taxes Code and the Goods and Services Tax will go some way in providing the former. Streamlining the revenue departments, and cleaning up the pervasive corruption therein, will ensure the latter. India also needs to review the various tax treaties it has entered into, and modify or drop those which are functioning as a handy conduit for round-tripping illegally generated wealth in India back home, via obscure tax shelters, without providing credible gains to the economy.

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