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This is why Rahul Gandhi so desperately wants to speak in the parliament

Editorial Desk
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This is why Rahul Gandhi so desperately wants to speak in the parliament

For many days now Rahul Gandhi has been complaining that he isn’t being allowed to speak in the Parliament by the BJP. He even went into a Rahul-ism claiming that if he speaks in the Parliament there would be an earthquake. No body quite knew why Rahul Gandhi was so insistent on speaking in the Parliament, as after all some years ago Rahul wasn’t even interested in attending parliament, let alone taking part in debates.

But now it seems the cat is out of the bag. Today Rahul Gandhi claimed that he was privy to some personal information regarding corruption by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said that he wanted to reveal this in the Parliament but the BJP was not allowing this. Plus he went to the extent of claiming that PM Modi was terrified over the fact that Rahul had that information.

The natural reaction of most people was to wonder why did he have to insist on speaking inside the parliament to reveal such a explosive piece of information. Assuming Rahul Gandhi has some real concrete actionable information, it would serve his party and the entire opposition a lot if he took one of trademark roll-up-sleeves press conferences where he exposes the entire deal of corruption.

The answer to this lies in our assumption that Rahul Gandhi actually has some credible information in the first place. The fact is, according to the Article 105(2) of the constitution, anybody speaking in the Parliament gets complete immunity from any legal consequences. It states that:

“No member of Parliament shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in Parliament or any committee thereof, and no person shall be so liable in respect of the publication by or under the authority of either House of Parliament of any report, paper, votes or proceedings.”

As stated, the law grants a sweeping immunity from any sort of prosecution for speaking absolutely anything in the Parliament, however libelous it may be (the Speaker at best can order to expunge the remarks). So Rahul Gandhi can lie inside the parliament, and then people can repeat the same outside the parliament by merely “reporting” what Rahul said.

And it is very possible that Rahul Gandhi is hoping to take support of this very clause to save himself. After all Rahul Gandhi is still on trial for his claim that RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi, which he had made at an election rally. And has been subject to another defamation case for his Khoon Ki Dalali comment.

Even Arvind Kejriwal seems to be taunting Rahul after his latest expose by asking the question everyone has on their minds.



Maybe Kejriwal himself is aware of this Modus Operandi as when on the floor of the Delhi Assembly he brought out documents alleging corruption by Narendra Modi when he was the Gujarat CM, but conspicuously refrained from overtly claiming the same in either a press conference. In Kejriwal’s case, he probably was using the Article 194(2) of the constitution that grants the same immunity to state assemblies.

Furthermore, the corruption claims made by Kejriwal against Prime Minister Modi has been discredited by the Supreme Court last month. The apex court said that the “proof” about such alleged bribe to Modi was “sub par”. The Judges further said that if such proofs were considered credible, anyone in the world can be accused of any wrongdoing.

Since the proof is not legally tenable, the best a politician can do is to make this claim inside a legislative house and shield himself legally, and hope that his supporters and media will make the lie travel wide and far. And this is what Rahul Gandhi is trying to do.

The most infamous example of misuse of this immunity is the JMM bribery case. In that case, the Supreme Court had granted immunity from prosecution to the JMM MPs who had taken a bribe for voting to save the Congress government back in 1993. The court in its judgement had held that those who took bribe but did not vote were liable to be prosecuted under Prevention of Corruption Act as they would not be entitled to immunity from prosecution granted to MPs.

Allegations against Kiren Rijiju and the controversial officer at the heart of it

OpIndia Staff
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Allegations against Kiren Rijiju and the controversial officer at the heart of it

Union Minister of State, Home, Kiren Rijiju has been accused by Congress of being involved in a 450 crore hydro-projects scam in Arunachal Pradesh. This is the first time a Union Minister in the Modi Government has been connected to an alleged scam. Following is a recap of the entire controversy:

How it all began:

The Chief Vigilance Officer of  North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO), Satish Verma had written a 129 page report alleging an “elaborate conspiracy” involving contractors, NEEPCO officials and the West Kameng district administration to defraud NEEPCO and the government of funds that “may extend” up to Rs 450 crore (estimated total budget of transportation of boulders and sands).

This report was sent to the Central Vigilance Commissioner, the CBI, and the Power Ministry in July 2016. Verma alleged corruption in the construction of two dams for the 600 MW Kameng Hydro Electric Project, wherein he claimed that several inflated bills under the pretext of transporting boulders to the dam site were presented and that the main contractor for the dam, Patel Engineering (PEL) provided many fake transportation chalans.

PEL was awarded the dam construction project in 2004, while they were awarded the work of transportation of boulders and sands in 2012. They had been getting their bills cleared from time to time, before Verma came up with his report.

As a result, clearance of bills, primarily between the period of May and July 2015, of PEL was stopped by NEEPCO after Verma sent an advisory to the Head of Project flagging the alleged irregularities. CBI is reportedly in the process of collecting all documents and related papers and they have made two “surprise checks”, but they have not come up with any report yet.

What is Kiren Rijiju connection?

The hydro-electric project falls under Kiren Rijiju’s constituency. As payments to PEL for the transportation costs were stopped, PEL in turn didn’t pay various sub-contractors employed it. One of the sub-contractors was Mr, Goboi Rijiju, who is being claimed as a cousin of Kiren Rijiju.

There is an audio recording where Goboi Rijiju is heard invoking Kiren Rijiju’s name in a meeting with CVO Satish Verma for clearing all the pending payments. This recording is part of the report prepared by Verma, who in all probability recorded the conversation himself to back up his allegations of corruption.

While these are indirect connections, what made Rijiju’s connection somewhat direct is a letter to the Power Ministry he wrote on 4th Nov 2015, requesting the Ministry to consider releasing the payments that were blocked after Verma’s report.

Congress now claims that this letter proves that Kiren Rijiju is directly involved in the scam and thus he should resign.

Kiren Rijiju’s defence:

Kiran Rijiju denies that Goboi Rijiju is his relative. He claimed that the concerned person belongs to his village and comes from the same clan, and that’s why some media persons are referring to him as his cousin, but there is no blood relation.

He defended his letter to the Power Ministry by claiming that he was just helping out his constituency residents (the sub contractors) who approached him with their problem (of payments being blocked by NEEPCO). He further pointed out that if there was any scam, it was under the Congress regime as the contracts were awarded before the current government took charge.

Rijiju also questioned the amount of 450 crore rupees being thrown around, claiming that 400 crore rupees was spent on transportation since 2004 and 90% of the work was completed so on what basis media was flashing it as 450 crore rupees scam?

The government also came out in support of Kiren Rijuju, pointing out that the payments were released not after the MoS, Home wrote the letter to the Power Minister, but because Satish Verma himself authorised in October 2015 – a month before Rijuju wrote the letter – to release 60% of the billed amount. Government blamed Verma of creating this whole controversy by making baseless allegations.

Who is the Satish Verma?

An IPS officer from the Gujarat cadre, he was one of the three members of the Gujarat High Court appointed SIT to probe the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. He differed from the other members and believed that the encounter was fake. He is accused of torturing RVS Mani, former under secretary in the Home Ministry, to file a second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case which implicated his seniors and wherein the references to the alleged links of Ishrat Jahan with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were removed.

Verma is also alleged as being a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes that both 26/11 (Mumbai terror attacks) and 2001 Parliament attacks were orchestrated by the Government of India.

In July this year, Verma was removed as CVO NEEPCO, since he was charge-sheeted in May for continued violation of CVC instructions and for not performing his duties with due diligence and care. Government claims that Verma is now trying to get even for the disciplinary action taken against him.

Chanda-bandi hits Aam Aadmi Party while it runs down note-bandi

OpIndia Staff
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Chanda-bandi hits Aam Aadmi Party while it runs down note-bandi

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been in the forefront of fighting note-bandi (demonetisation) by terming it anti-poor and a scam. For the same, its party members including supremo Arvind Kejriwal have been making all kinds of claims – mostly dubious, mischievous, and downright lies – even as the party opted out of some local body elections, allegedly because it didn’t have enough money to fight them.

It can’t be said with certainty that the funds shortage that the party is facing is entirely due to demonetisation, but it seems that the party will have to deal with more problems with its fund-raising in the coming days.

A former member of the party and ex co-convener of the NRI cell of AAP, Dr. Munish Raizada has asked for “Chanda band Satyagrah” where he is asking people to not donate to AAP till the party puts the list of donors back on its website. He has launched even a website www.nolistnodonation.com for the same.

It should be recalled that AAP had won a lot of public support after it declared that it will focus on funding itself by collecting chanda (donations) from the common man rather than by accepting big donations from corporate houses or anonymous donors with suspect intentions. The party claimed that this way it will be accountable to the public and work for their interests rather than working for groups with vested interests.

To showcase the donation process and to claim transparency in its dealings, the party put a public list of donors on its website. The list was updated in real time and one could know the quantum and frequency of donations the party was receiving every day. This indeed was different and welcome approach when compared with other political parties of India.

There were some loopholes right from the beginning e.g. one could enter fake names and contribute to the party fund. People used names like “Narendra Modi” and “weloveYedaKejriwal” (sic) to contribute. But the party claimed that these were minor issues as all donations were accepted either through digital means or through cheques, thus there was proper documentation in the backend.

But the claim of proper documentation received a serious setback in February last year when the party couldn’t explain properly how it received 2 crore rupees and who were the real donors. The party continued to claim it as a conspiracy against itself and instead pointed fingers at dubious sources of funding of other political parties.

Nonetheless, the list of donors continued to exist on its website and the party would often use the data (donation trends) to claim how the party continued to receive public support. There were numerous news articles citing how donations jumped after any ink attack on Kejriwal or any other allegation.

But in July this year, the list of donors was taken off from the party’s website. July 6 was the last date on which the party updated its list of donors, after which one found the following message in place of the public list:

Screenshot of AAP's websitee
Over six months have passed, but it still says “coming soon”.

The other donation related links and features on the party’s website continued to function without problem though i.e. one can still donate using their online form and digital transaction – something that the party supporters are nowadays attacking after some Twitter accounts were hacked. People assumed that there might be some technical issue and the list will be back in a few days.

However, even after six months, the party has not put back its list of donors on the website.

There has been wide range of speculations over why the party has decided to go back on its promise of transparency. Former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav believes that the party is no longer receiving substantial donations from the common man and it has become like yet another political party getting funds from “traditional” sources, which is why it is not showing the list to public.

Such chatter has now led former supporters like Dr. Munish Raizada to announce chanda-bandi till AAP makes it funding public again. He has even called on people to assemble at Raj Ghat in Delhi on 24th December at 10 AM to do satyagrah if the party doesn’t bring back the list.

How two Economists destroyed Manmohan Singh’s arguments against demonetisation

OpIndia Staff
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How two Economists destroyed Manmohan Singh’s arguments against demonetisation

Manmohan Singh has been in the news recently after shocking everyone by speaking in the Rajya Sabha. He then went a step ahead and on December 9th published an op-ed in The Hindu titled, ‘Making of a mammoth tragedy‘ while referring to the mammoth exercise of demonetisation undertaken by the Modi government.

While his credentials as a politician have never been flaunted by either him or his party, his qualifications as an economist, be it his degrees from foreign universities, stint as an RBI governor, or most importantly, his role in opening up the economy have long been heavily sold by the Congress party and its ecosystem. So when he wrote the op-ed on demonetisation, his views were presented as gospel truth coming from an economist of high repute and knowledge.

However, not everyone was impressed. Two economists – S Gurumurthy and Bibek Debroy – have now stepped in and demonstrated why Manmohan Singh’s op-ed was mostly high on rhetoric and low on content.

Bibek Debroy is a member of the Niti Aayog, and has also studied at the Trinity College in Cambridge which might come as a relief to Mr Singh’s supporters obsessed with foreign degrees. In the article titled, ‘Asking the right questions‘, he was sarcastically critical of Dr. Singh, who failed to set things right, or even make an attempt towards that, when he had the opportunity.

S Gurumurthy is an economic analyst and a Chartered Accountant. He is also the co-convener of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. His opinion titled ‘Not a tragedy, but the remedy‘, he exposed the disease that was inflicted upon the Indian economy by the UPA, due to which the remedy was needed badly.

Below are some highlights of Mr Singh’s arguments and S Gurumurthy and Bibek Debroy’s counter-arguments.

Low banking penetration:

Manmohan Singh had written that: 90% of the workforce in India still gets paid in cash. These people comprise of hundreds of millions of agriculture workers, construction workers whose life has now been thrown into a disarray as there are still more than 600 million Indians who live in a town or village with no bank.

To this, Mr. Debroy quoted Manmohan Singh’s Independence Day speech of 2012, where he had stated, “Just 10 years back only three out of every 10 households in our villages were benefiting from banking services. Today more than half of the rural households get the benefit of bank accounts. It will be our endeavor to ensure that all households benefit from bank accounts in the next two years.”

So what data was Manmohan Singh quoting? Did he make false claims in his speech four years back that most Indians will be brought into the banking network? And that was four years back. Even if one assumes Manmohan Singh did nothing after 2012, there has been PM Modi’s Jan-Dhan Yojna, through which 258.2 million additional bank accounts have been opened till 2016.

Citing more data and some survey findings, Mr. Debroy demonstrated that Manmohan Singh was painting an alarmist picture just to back his mammoth claim.

Black money is not all cash:

Manmohan Singh, while acknowledging that black money is a serious problem, had argued that only a tiny fraction of the black money was stored in form of cash and the major storage areas being, gold, land and foreign reserves among others.

Mr. Debroy wondered when did anyone from the current government claim that black money was all cash. Even Prime Minister Modi has been hinting that he will now target benaami property and other forms of black money.

Mr. Debroy further pointed out the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act of 2016, which covered both moveable and immoveable property, was notified by the current government. He reminded the former Prime Minister that the act was passed in 1988, but rules were not framed by successive governments.

Demonetisation will derail GDP growth and job creation:

In his op-ed, Dr. Singh had predicted that demonetisation could have ripple effects on GDP growth and job creation and could spell doom for both of these. Many from the Congress ecosystem had flashed how the tenure of Manmohan Singh had seen decent growth and development.

But this entire cheerleading of Manmohan Singh’s tenure was taken to the cleaners by Mr. Gurumurthy, who put the numbers in perspective in his article.

Mr. Gurumurthy compared Dr. Singh’s tenure (2004-14) to the NDA’s rule (1999-04). The GDP during the NDA regime grew a total of 27.8% and a whopping 600 lakh jobs were created. While during the UPA regime, GDP grew a total of 50.8% but only a paltry 27 lakh jobs were created. This, he claimed as due to the UPA government benefitting from the huge asset price inflation, which is treated as wealth by modern economists and gets added to the GDP.

Stocks and gold prices jumped annually by 60 per cent and property prices doubled every two-three years under Manmohan Singh. This was enabled by a huge percentage of cash transactions, with most cash being held in high denomination notes (HDNs). Gurumurthy demonstrated how both the trends – cash with public as well as proportion of HDNs rose sharply under UPA. All helping with asset price inflation and giving an illusion of growth.

Mr. Gurumurthy argued that the option before Prime Minister Modi was to continue with this where GDP growth appears high but real economic growth is elusive, or to take a strict corrective step that may appear like derailing growth. PM Modi went for corrective step – the remedy.

Owaisi joins Sibal and Kejriwal in giving communal colour to demonetisation

OpIndia Staff
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Owaisi joins Sibal and Kejriwal in giving communal colour to demonetisation

It is no secret that the opposition parties are trying their best do discredit the demonetisation drive by the union government and they have been coming up with all kinds of arguments. While criticisms like cash crunch and inconvenience to people are logical and valid, some leaders have gone to the illogical extent of linking it with religions.

The latest to do so is the AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, who has claimed that the Modi Government was not supplying cash in banks and ATMs present in Muslim dominated areas! Owaisi virtually accused the government of profiling its citizens based on religious grounds and practicing discriminatory policies.

The absurdity of this claim was rejected by Muslims themselves, who claimed – as per a survey conducted by India Today – that they were inconvenienced as much as any other Indian citizen and faced no special discrimination in getting cash.

Owaisi’s claims are further ridiculous as it suggests that there is some grand conspiracy to keep Muslims out of the banking system, whereas the truth is that the Modi government has actually been under attack from its traditional supporters for toying with ideas like Islamic Banking to bring Muslims into the banking system.

But Owaisi is not the first one or the only one to give communal colours to the demonetisation drive.

One of the earliest ones to drag religion into the whole affair was Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, who tweeted that demonetisation had ruined Hindus:



While BJP rubbished Kejriwal’s claims, one group has supported his statement. Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha has claimed that demonetisation was anti-Hindu and it will bring the downfall of the government.

Arvind Kejriwal has often mocked the Modi government that its demonetisation drive received support from Vijay Mallya, who is accused of financial malpractices. Now it will be interesting to know what he thinks about himself as his thoughts have been supported by a group like Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

The other party to bring communal angle to demonetisation was Congress. Senior leader of the party Kapil Sibal claimed that Muslims were the most discomforted due to demonetisation as they choose not to open bank accounts, for earning interest (on deposits) is haram (forbidden) in Islam.


Maybe Sibal and Owaisi should first meet and decide whether Muslims have bank accounts or not.

Satyendra Jain deletes old embarrassing tweets to Kejriwal, but we have a copy

OpIndia Staff
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Satyendra Jain deletes old embarrassing tweets to Kejriwal, but we have a copy

Satyendra Jain is a trusted soldier of AAP, that too possessing a high rank of cabinet minister, and holding the health portfolio. This is of course because AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal considers him as one of his close aides. This was also seen when AAP & Kejriwal rallied behind Jain and gave him a clean chit when allegations of financial impropriety were flung at Jain.

But it appears their relation was not always so close. Twitter users had dug out some old tweets of Satyendra Kumar Jain in which he was seen making some rather “amusing” remarks about his new found hero Arvind Kejriwal. Social media users trolled Jain for these old tweets a lot:


And finally it emerges now, that “Satinder” deleted all these old embarrassing tweets, which is why you cant see the embedded tweets in the above troll tweets. But screenshots live forever:

The deleted tweets

In the first case he had referred to Kejriwal as “Aalo”, meaning potato, a word which became synonymous with Kejriwal after allegations that it was a name given to him by a woman with whom he had an alleged extramarital affair. In the second case it appears Satyendar was taunting Kejriwal rather coarsely for indulging in only words and no action, even comparing him to a dog.

Jain may have deleted these embarrassing tweets, but they live on forever.

Banks facing the heat in demonetisation crack-down

OpIndia Staff
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Banks facing the heat in demonetisation crack-down

After the Income Tax department conducted a series of raids on Axis Bank Delhi and found crores of dubious money deposited in fake accounts, people were anxious to know how is the government tackling these cases. While people are standing outside ATMs/banks for hours for 2000 rupees, these officials were helping in conversion of crores of black money. These incidents were bound to infuriate people against Axis Bank, and they did too.


As the days after the declaration of demonetisation scheme are progressing, PM Narendra Modi is stunning everyone by revealing unexpected strategies made by his team to catch black-money holders and officials who are aiding them. After several raids and speculations on banks, Modi humorously spoke how the I-T department is quick to identify these hoarders and bankers.

In his speech at inauguration of an Amul unit in Deesa, Modi said,

Corrupt Bank officials are going to jail. People who ran away with big bundles of cash are going to jail. They thought, Modi ji has banned Rs 1000, Rs 500 but they would do something from the back gate. But they didn’t know, Modi has put cameras on the back gates. All of them will be arrested, no one will be spared.

Today media houses are reporting that the government has conducted sting operations in around 500 branches of banks across the country.


Some of the news are also reporting the possibility of cancellation of Axis Bank licence.


Things will only get clearer after the Finance Ministry puts official statements on the sting operations. However, the sting news will certainly give a warning and fear to those bankers who are abetting the corrupts.

Appointment of the Army Chief – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

rohitagarwal
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Appointment of the Army Chief – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Amidst speculation and heated debates about the delay in appointment of the next Army Chief, rumours about the two senior army commanders likely to be superseded are doing rounds. One argument being forwarded is – “shouldn’t merit rather than seniority be the criterion?” As arguments go, it is a tempting one, one which is difficult to disagree with. But it’s not without its pitfalls.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that there is significant difference between Army Commanders in terms of their merit or suitability for the job. What would be the parameters on which such differences could be measured? How would the performance of a Northern Army Commander dealing with Counter Insurgency operations be compared with that of, say the Western Army Commander who’s peacetime deliverables would be substantially different? Or with the Vice Chief, who may have nothing to show but procurement projects which are delayed for no fault of his?

Since there is no objective mechanism to ascertain any differences in merit, even if they do exist, there is bound to be subjectivity in making such a choice. Even this may work without causing much of an upheaval as long as there is a strong government in place. But imagine this scenario sometime in the future.

Say there is a weak coalition government in place at the centre. There are three or four regional satraps jointly keeping the government afloat, each with just enough MPs to bring the government down if it comes to a crunch. And you have seven Army Commanders, each of whom is now in the running for the Army Chief post based on precedence set by selecting a chief ‘on merit’ rather than on seniority as used to happen earlier. Imagine if each of them is lobbying with one or more of the regional satraps to help them. You will have a situation where politicians are rooting for their ‘candidate’ to be the next Army Chief. Regional, cast and religious affiliations would come into play.

We recently saw the CM of a state creating a huge controversy over a routine army exercise. In future such controversies could become a way of ‘eliminating’ a candidate in the race for chief. Matter would be further complicated by the central government rooting for its own candidate, advised by the incumbent chief, probably based on Regimental or arm affiliations. Further unfolding and ramifications of such a scenario are actually too disturbing to imagine.

For the past seven decades, the Armed Forces have carried out their role professionally, having earned universal trust and respect in the country. They have remained steadfastly apolitical, and though appointment of the chiefs have been a political decision, there has been no politics involved in the decision itself. This is because the principle of senior most army commander becoming the chief has been strictly followed, leaving the government of the day very little room for playing favourites.

When the system has worked well for the past seven decades, there shouldn’t be any reason to tamper with it unnecessarily. Even if well intentioned, a move which is presently unnecessary and potential damaging in the long run, must be avoided at all costs. So, Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere or as the Americans, now our ‘major defence partners’ say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

(Author is an ex army-man; the article first appeared on author’s blog)

E-mails of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar hacked, NDTV approaches courts

OpIndia Staff
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E-mails of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar hacked, NDTV approaches courts

Late last night on Saturday, the Twitter account of controversial NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt appeared hacked. Tweets were posted by the same group – calling itself “Legion” – that had earlier claimed to hack Twitter accounts of Rahul Gandhi and Vijay Mallya.

The involvement of the same group was confirmed as the modus operandi of the hackers was the same i.e. first crack and hack the email systems and then use the emails to reset password of the associated Twitter account.

An employee of Twitter confirmed that the Twitter accounts were hacked as the users like Rahul Gandhi, Vijay Mallya and now Barkha Dutt were not using the two-step authentication process, which would have made access to a mobile phone compulsory, apart from the password, for logging into Twitter:


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The above was confirmed when the Twitter account of anther NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar was hacked a couple of hours after hacking of Barkha Dutt’s account. It appears that both Barkha and Ravish were using their official NDTV emails to log into Twitter, which allowed the hackers to reset their passwords after hacking into the email accounts.

So essentially this was another email hack, even though it’s the hacking of Twitter accounts that have made all the news in the past two weeks.

While the emails of Congress were not leaked – the hackers claim that they will leak those in the new year – email archive files of Vijay Mallya and Barkha Dutt were leaked by the hackers. Though there was one difference – in case of Mallya, hackers put selective information from the email files on the hacked Twitter page, no such selective emails were released by the hackers on the hacked Twitter pages of either Barkha Dutt or Ravish Kumar.

As we had pointed out in our earlier report, those leaks from Mallya’s emails contained private and confidential information about his business deals and properties, while the exact nature of email leaks of Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar is yet not known.

However, it does appear that there is some sensitive and confidential information, perhaps damaging too, contained in those emails as NDTV declared that they will be approaching courts to stop these emails from being accessed by the public:


This is similar to what Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh had done around ten years ago when his phone conversation with some personalities were reportedly recorded and in the process of being leaked. He approached courts and made sure that no media organisation carried those tapes.

Many personalities, such as Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan had then argued that the tapes should be released as they could throw light on misuse of public offices.

One can similarly argue that the emails of these top journalists should also be released if they throw light on some politician-media nexus or some other wrongdoings by public figures. In fact, similar arguments were put forward when Radia tapes were released – incidentally Barkha Dutt was involved there too – and privacy concerns were put on the backburner as the information contained in the tapes hinted at corruption and nexus between corporate houses, politicians and media.

However, this time most of the talking heads are arguing that the email hacks are against privacy, which of course it is, just like any phone tapping or sting operation. Not just against privacy, email hacking is a cyber crime, and we at OpIndia.com are not endorsing that.

We leave upon the readers to conclude whether the arguments of various people are consistent over years vis a vis incidents of similar nature.

Meanwhile a few people on Twitter are making a few claims based on the leaked email archive files of Barkha and Ravish, but we are not carrying those.

And on expected lines, many in the media, abetted by Congress and AAP leaders and supporters, are again making this breach of email security an issue about reliability of digital transactions and cashless economy.

THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse

Gaurav
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THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse

The past one month has seen people discuss the impact of demonetisation threadbare. Right from the positives, to the negatives to the fake rumours, all have been debated in media and social media. The latest thing catching the eye of the public are the frequent reports of major raids in some or the other part of the country where-in huge stashes of gold, old demonetised cash, or new currency have been seized by the tax authorities.

The country-wide total of seizures till date is staggering:

Update: As a benchmark, one can see the figures of assets seized in raids in earlier periods. For example, as per this report, the first seven months of 2015 saw Income Tax raids seize assets worth about Rs 102.50 crores. The same figure for the same seven months of 2016 was about Rs 330 crores. We are just 4 weeks into demonetisation, and the raids have started just 2-3 weeks back. In this short span, the value of assets seized has easily surpassed the 7-months figure of 2015 and is all set to overtake even the 7-months figure of 2016.

What explains this sudden spurt in successful raids? How are the authorities getting information about such huge hoards of cash? Is it due to the rumoured “GPS chip” in the new Rs 2000 notes?

The most likely reasons are these:

Firstly, the tax authorities are liasoning with various other intelligence authorities like CBI etc.  Such swoops based on the information available only to the tax department are not so common. This kind of targeted attacking works best when information is shared among various agencies.

Secondly, there has to be a clear-cut instruction from above. And it has to come from the very top, i.e. the Prime Minister, flowing to the Finance Minister, and then all the agencies. The instruction is most probably to aggressively chase such money launderers. It is even possible that the IT sleuths have been given targets, failing which they are answerable to their higher-ups.

Thirdly, there is one key feature regarding demonetisation which ensures that information flows rather easily: Whether you are getting rid of old notes or getting new notes, you eventually have to go to a bank. Sure, you might unload your old wealth with some other launderer but the final point in this chain has to approach a bank. So also, the source of any new currency has to be a bank.

And that is where everyone leads a trail.

The entire chain of launderers is only as strong as its weakest link. The tax authorities have to crack only one of the agents in the chain, and a quick look into his communication records like phone, sms or email would reveal all the people he has been dealing with.

There are multiple ways to get to such people. All data of bank transactions is on record and is reported to tax authorities. Any spike or high value transaction in a normally defunct account can be traced easily using data analytics tools. From there on it is just a matter of tracing the branch, the account holder, and using the branches surveillance systems to catch any more accomplices.

Even if the entire exercise has been done via the connivance of the bank branch manager, he will still leave some or the other trail in the bank’s system to account for the sudden disappearance of a huge stash of cash received from the RBI. The RBI maintains a record of cash supplied to each and every branch and will obviously check the outflow of such cash too, to see that it reconciles with the inflow. And that can be enough to probe deeper and reveal more leads. As has been seen in many raids, even when the bank manager was hand in glove, the IT sleuths have caught up with him and the launderers.

And this is just the beginning.

We are right now in a dynamic situation since the window till 30th December to deposit old notes is still open. Banks are still accepting old notes and data is being generated even as we speak. Come January or February, all this data will be frozen and will be a gold-mine for analysts.

Any dormant account suddenly being triggered (egs: shell or dormant companies being used to launder cash) or any account which usually has lower volumes, or any newly opened accounts showing sudden increase, or any accounts showing a deposit and an instant transfer or withdrawal, all these anomalies will be crystal clear from the data of the banks. It would be only a matter of time before sleuths begin identifying and investigating the parties concerned.

This is as far as hard cash is concerned. How do they tackle any other forms of conversions? One of the popular modes could be the real estate sector. Deals could have been struck to sell properties at lower than fair values, with the difference being paid in old cash, basically the purchaser off-loading his cash onto the seller. The seller obviously has to get the cash to a bank, but there is another way they can get caught.

For the past few years, sub-registrar offices have been insisting on PANs of the parties involved in real-estate transactions. This data is then passed on to the Income Tax authorities. Till now such data was only used by the Income Tax Department in scrutiny assessments or in case of major mis-matches in tax returns and their data. But going forward, one wouldn’t be surprised if they start using this data more actively.

One possible move in the future could be opening up all the cases where properties were transferred from 9th November 2016 till 30th December 2016. Auto-generated notices can be sent to the concerned persons and where satisfactory replies are not received, or where some other parameters are inconsistent, further details can be asked for.

The fact is in today’s digital world, much more data is available and one needs only the will and skill to parse through all the data to catch the crooks. Hence it is only a matter of time rather than anything else, even though the party seems to have begun. And if you think this is the end, wait till GST comes. Once GST is implemented, the data at hand of the tax authorities will make tax evasion much harder.

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