Parliamentary panel report on note ban by August 31

New Delhi: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi having claimed in his Independence Day speech that around Rs 3 lakh crore returned to formal economy after note ban came into effect, it would be interesting to see whether the high-profile parliamentary panel on finance also comes up with a similar figure in its findings, despite the fact that RBI governor Urjit Patel could not provide it with a credible reply on the matter.

According to highly-placed sources, the parliamentary panel, headed by Congress MP M. Veerappa Moily, is going to adopt and submit its report on demonetisation to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on August 31, which incidentally also is the last day of its composition. It will be reconstituted again for 12 months on September 1.

While the panel has held several sittings on the demonetisation issue and even summoned Mr Patel twice for seeking RBI’s response on the quantum of old currency recovered by the exchequer by December 30, 2016 — the last date for submitting old currency notes — the Central bank’s governor had failed to give any convincing reply to it. He, in fact, had informed the panel last month that notes are still being counted, forcing Congress MP Digvijay Singh (who is a member of the committee) to wonder whether the government will be able to answer the question before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls!

In this context it was quite interesting when Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech, citing research conducted by outside experts, said that around Rs 3 lakh crore in terms of hidden black money, which had never before come into the banking system, has returned to it after demonetisation exercise of November 8, 2016.

With Mr Modi quoting a specific figure of about Rs 3 lakh crore having returned to the banking system post demonetisation, it would be interesting to see what figure is revealed by the parliamentary panel’s report, and whether it also comes up with a similar figure or not.

Also it was for the first time since demonetisation happened nine months back, that any kind of figure had come from the government on quantum of black money returning to it through the exercise, and that too from the Prime Minister himself.

The panel’s report would be keenly awaited as it could not be submitted on August 11, which was the last day of the recently concluded Monsoon session of Parliament. This newspaper had earlier reported that the panel was keen to submit its report on August 11, but  owing to absence of data related to quantum of black money recovered by the government till December 30, 2016, it could not do so.