6 APRIL 2016

Ø  The Army will begin trials from June on a selection system that will, for the first time, include a psychological test for candidates to non-officer positions. Manas Kumar Mandal, Director-General (Life Sciences) at the DRDO, linked the changes at least in part to his organisation’s efforts to reduce fratricide and suicide within the forces.

Ø  Despite several official efforts to trace and recover black money India has not registered any major success, and investigation agencies are still struggling to estimate how much Indian wealth is parked in tax havens. While the Panama papers bring out yet another list of India’s rich and influential who have parked money in tax havens, officials are grapping to find credible ways to verify a new estimate showing that over $505 billion (approximately Rs. 33,83,500 crore) has left India during the 2004-13 period. He pointed out that all major databases on which action have been initiated have all come from foreign sources. “Be it HSBC Geneva or Liechtenstein, they have all come from abroad,” Over the years, the Indian government has made several attempts to recover black money, by mostly offering opportunity to people to declare their black money. The first such scheme was in 1951, which led to the collection of Rs. 10.89 crore in taxes, and there have been eight more such schemes, until the Modi government came to power in 2014. In 1997, the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme was the most successful of all of them, collecting Rs. 9,745 crore in taxes. The Modi government’s first major announcement was the setting up of the SIT on black money. It followed it up with a three months compliance window between July and September 2015 under the black money Act. It resulted in 644 declarations, totalling declaration of foreign assets worth Rs. 4,164 crore. A total of Rs. 446 crore was collected as tax and penalty. Officials admit that what has been collected is negligible.

Ø  The government of Panama on Tuesday promised India assistance in investigating those who figure on the latest list of the rich and the influential who have parked money in secretive tax havens. The list, which includes at least 500 Indian citizens, has emerged from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm registered in Panama, which helped its elite transnational clientele to evade taxes for several decades. Panama has the largest community of Indians in Central America, mostly in the Panama Canal Zone.

Ø  The U.S. is poised to sell nine AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters worth $170 million to Pakistan, weeks after Obama administration decided to provide eight F-16 fighter jets to the country despite the strong opposition from some Congressmen and India. The Pentagon has awarded Bell Helicopter a contract to manufacture and deliver the choppers to Pakistan under its foreign military sales funds. In a statement, the Defence Department on Monday said the work would be performed in Fort Worth and Amarillo (both in Texas) and was expected to be completed in September 2018. The contract, which also includes nine auxiliary fuel kits for Pakistan, is part of the $952 million military hardware sale by the U.S. which was notified to the Congress last April. On April 6 last year, the State Department had notified to the Congress its decision to sell military hardware worth of $950 million to Pakistan. As per the State Department notification to the Congress, Pakistan has requested a possible sale of 15 AH-1Z viper attack helicopters, 32 T-700 GE 401C engines (30 installed and 2 spares), and 1000 AGM-114 R Hellfire II Missiles in containers.