UID a new pathway to combat graft: PM

Vows to curb leakage in public distribution system

This is the expectation of  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from the project, headed by Nandan Nilankani, that is to give UID numbers to all residents in the country.

“We would have discovered a  new pathway to eliminate the scope for corruption and leakages in the management and distribution of various subsidies to which our people are entitled.

“But it will take time. It cannot be done instantly”, Prime Minster said referring to the UID project during his media interaction here on Wednesday. The Prime Minister said all possible steps were being taken to recover black money which was estimated to be as much as Rs 4 lakh crores.

“We are in the process of negotiating double taxation avoidance agreements, tax information agreements and we have fought hard in the Group of 20 to see that the secrecy of tax saving banking systems should be modified”, he said.

Tax evasion

Singh said tax evasion was  one of the important source of black money generation. “But there are other issues - narcotics, trafficking in human beings - all these illegal activities…we need a strong mechanism to track down these criminal elements.

“But in all these, my worry is to avoid a situation when we convert this vast country of over 1.2 billion people into a state where everybody is policing everybody else. We must not bring back the licence permit raj which we sought to abolish in 1991”, he said.