Bengaluru: The former Prime Minister and MP H D Deve Gowda said that the current debate on Black Money is totally misplaced. While speaking to a leading news channel the 82 year old veteran leader said “the black money was just an election issue cleverly used by the BJP to come to power. In their eagerness to come to power, political parties make all kinds of promises. The BJP also did the same. Even they knew that it was not so easy to get the money back. It was just a poll promise”.

He claims that he was the first Prime Minister who made an honest effort to bring out black money by introducing the voluntary disclosure of income scheme during the United Front regime during 1997. Gowda said that the net money generated by then was Rs 10,800 Crore and it was used for improving the public distribution system particularly to give rice and wheat at subsidized rates.

Virtually defending the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government on black money debate, Gowda said “the Congress led by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used the Gareebi Hatao (eradication of poverty) slogan to come to power in 1971. We still have poverty across India. Did the Congress eradicate poverty?”

He also criticized the political parties for focusing only on the Swiss bank and a few other European banks ignoring the huge sum of black money stashed away in banks in Mauritius, Singapore and Dubai. He said “real estate and mining are the two biggest sources of black money in India”.

Gowda, who is also the founder of the JDS, was Karnataka Chief Minister before he became the Prime Minister in 1996.