PM Narendra Modi tries to quell concerns on black money via radio

NEW DELHI: After a week which saw the Supreme Court upbraid the government on the black money issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to a public broadcast to quell any concerns on that front.

“On the matter of the return of black money, please trust this pradhan sewak of yours, the return of this money is an article of faith with me,” PM Modi said during the second of his radio chats called ‘ Mann Ki Baat’.

The PM said neither he, nor anyone in the previous or current government, had a realistic figure of the money siphoned from India and stored in various offshore accounts.

But Modi said he was assured that the government was “on the right track” in bringing it back. This reiteration of the BJP’s election-time commitment on return of black money is being interpreted as the PM’s attempt at damage control.

Senior BJP leaders scoffed at this interpretation of the speech. The PM’s words were only to demonstrate that “nobody needs to have an iota of doubt” over the government’s commitment to bring back black money, said BJP V-P Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. Party insiders said Modi had already demonstrated that he had little faith in the previous government’s words on the issue. “It was significant that he said that nobody had any estimates yet of black money,” said a senior BJP office-bearer.