Intervening in debate on the Finance Bill in Rajya Sabha, Mr Chidambaram said the BTT was introduced for a specific purpose of detecting unaccounted money in the absence of alternative methods. “The tax will be withdrawn by the end of the year,” he said adding that the alternative methods to catch people with unaccounted money would be provided by the provisions in new Money Laundering Law.

The Finance Minister disagreed with BJP leader Jaswant Singh that the BTT was causing inconvenience to people.

“How many people take out Rs 50,000 in cash in single transaction in a day,” Mr Chidambaram asked. He, however, offered to share the names of some ‘big fish’ who were caught by tax authorities with the help of the cues provided by the BTT. He clarified that the tax was applicable only on cash and not on payment by cheques.

The Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT) on the futures market, however, is here to stay. Rejecting the demand for withdrawal of CTT, Mr Chidambaram said that “I am an old war horse in this game, we will live with this criticism.”

As stock brokers have accepted the Securities Transaction Tax (STT), the traders in commodity futures market will also accept the new tax, he said. The Budget had proposed to levy 0.017 per cent CTT on transactions in the commodity futures trade, which runs into lakhs of crores of rupees. With government completing the budgetary process there is no scope of withdrawal of the tax proposal which was vehemently opposed by the commodity exchanges.