New Delhi, May 28 – In its first day in office, Team Modi seems to be bang on job. At its first Cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday evening in New Delhi, the Centre formed a Special Investigation Team in black money case to be headed by former Supreme Court judge MB Shah.
Addressing a press conference soon after the decision, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Cabinet had to go by priority and would take up other important issues soon. On Friday last week, the Supreme Court had given the Centre a week’s time to notify a SIT to probe black money stashed in foreign banks by Indians.
The apex court had also asked Centre to secure safely all documents and names of Indian account holders in LGT Bank, Liechtenstein, given to India by Germany. The court had asked the revenue secretary to keep these documents safe and secure.
The Supreme Court directive came as petitioner in the case Ram Jethmalani referred to a fire incident in Shastri Bhawan on Thursday and expressed concern about the safety of documents relating to black money. He was told that the related documents were kept in North Block and not Shastri Bhawan.
Earlier on May 1, the apex court had directed the Centre to handover all the documents and information collected by it, in its probe in cases of alleged stashing of black money at LST bank in Liechtenstein to Jethmalani and others, who raised the issue before it.
It had directed the Centre to issue a notification regarding their appointment of the SIT within three weeks and had appointed retired judges MB Shah as chairman and Arijit Pasayat as vice chairman of the SIT.
-INDIA TODAY
