Who is lying on black money, RBI or PM: Congress

The Congress on Wednesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim of previously unaccounted Rs three lakh crore coming into the banking system after he announced scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes in November last year.
 
“We asked the same question in Parliament, but we were told that RBI was still counting demonetised notes,” AICC General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters here.
 
Azad flagged two figures cited by the Prime Minister in his Independence Day address – Rs 3 lakh crore that come into the banking system and Rs 1.75 lakh crore in black money that came into the banking system.
 
“When the counting of the money is in progress, how can the Prime Minister make this announcement? Is he not befooling the people of India,” the Congress leader asked.
 
“The huge question both the Prime Minister and the Reserve Bank of India has to answer to the Nation is that who is correct and who is lying,” Azad said.
 
Earlier, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the figures referred to by the prime minister were collated from ongoing probes and notices to depositors of unexplained money post demonetization.
 
“The revenue figures and the potential revenue gain figures were based on ongoing investigations, notices, responses (received by) the CBDT and the revenue department,” Jaitley said in response to questions on the prime minister's speech.
 
Jaitley said the numbers mentioned were not dependent on the report of the Reserve Bank of India.
 
Modi had said more than Rs 1.75 lakh crore deposited in the banks was under the scanner and black money worth Rs two lakh crore “had to be deposited in the banks”.
 
The Prime Minister also said over 18 lakh people have been identified, whose income was much higher than their known sources of income.