Harish Gupta. New Delhi
The Manmohan Singh government is in a serious dilemma whether to file a review petition in the Supreme Court on the question of setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by a retired Supreme Court judge with 10 top government officers and agencies reporting to him on Black Money.
Highly placed sources told the DNA late today that the Congress Core Committee held an unscheduled meeting to discuss the issue of go in for a review of the SC judgment and also on crisis in Telengana among other things.
When contacted, a senior official in the Prime Minister’s office said, “the matter is engaging the attention.”
While the union finance minister pranab mukherjee is extremely upset with the SC order as he had himself set up the high-powered committee comprising of heads of the RBI, CBDT, Revenue secretary, Enforcement director and other agencies on black money. The committee had been meeting regularly and making recommendations as well.
But the SC went ahead to set up SIT under its command and control under Justice B P Jeevan Reddy and M K Shah. However, another view in the government is that if it went ahead with the review petition, it will be construed of government’s insincerity in bringing black money stashed abroad. It may send a wrong signal too and give the Opposition a handle to launch another attack at a time when it is facing problem on various fronts.
Sources close to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi say that if the SC-monitored SIT is handling the issue, the Opposition won’t be able to attack the government and the party for not doing enough on the issue. It will be the responsibility of the Supreme Court now to do it. Secondly, the government accepted several SITs in the past – whether on Gujarat or demolitions in Delhi and for other issues. So why shall the government challenge this SIT merely because its on black money.
“Let it be a test case for the SC SIT. The government should seek certain clarifications and it should be a time-bound SIT and not unlimited and continueous body,” said a source.
