Govt lacks political will to check corruption: LK Advani

Accusing the government of lacking the political will to check corruption, BJP leader LK Advani today claimed that there has been "no movement" in bringing black money stashed in Swiss banks despite an assurance by the prime minister during the poll campaign.

Advani also favoured the ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption.

"I feel sorry to note that India is one of the fourteen" countries which has not ratified it out of the 140 countries who are signatory to the UN Convention, the BJP leader said in his latest blog posting.

The BJP leader repeated the demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the string of scandals that have surfaced lately.

BJP has been stalling Parliament proceedings since November 10 demanding  JPC probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Advani reminded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the promise made in the last Lok Sabha polls of bringing back Indian wealth stashed in "tax havens" abroad.

"During his poll campaign, the prime minister had promised to take action with regard to Indian wealth in foreign banks in the first 100 days of his tenure. More than 500 days have elapsed, and yet there has been no movement in this regard. The reason is utter lack of political will," he said.

He said a task force set up by the party this year has revealed that "estimates of Indian wealth stashed in tax-havens overseas vary from $500 billion (Rs25 lakh crores) to $1.4 trillion (Rs70 lakh crores)".

According to the Swiss Bank Association, Advani said, Indians have topped the list of black money depositors at the famous Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS).

He said BJP had raised the issue of India's "enormous wealth" stashed in countries like Ivory Coast, Liechtenstein and Switzerland and made it an issue in the last Lok Sabha polls.

Advani's blog, however, did not refer to the issue of graft and nepotism allegations against his party's government in Karnataka.