Black money accounts need to be stemmed: Prakash Javadekar

"As Prime Minster Modi has said we will win the fight against black money. All possible efforts will be made to bring back the illegal money from abroad.

"But the need is to be more concerned about how to ensure that there is no black money, how it can be stopped from originating. I am sure it will happen under Modi," Javadekar told reporters here.

The remarks by the Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Environment came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to get back every penny of the black money stashed abroad.

Modi had said the efforts to bring back black money stashed abroad are on the "right track" even as he acknowledged that there was no correct estimate about how much money is kept illegally in foreign countries.

In an address to the nation over radio, he had said that bringing back black money from outside the country is an "article of faith" for him and nothing will be lacking in his efforts to do so.

The Prime Minister's commitment to bring back black money stashed abroad comes against the backdrop of the stand it first took in the Supreme Court last week about the inability to disclose the names of the account holders in foreign banks because of the confidentially clause in treaties with other countries.

It had maintained that disclosure of details of account holders would hamper efforts to bring back black money.

The study appeared in the journal Ecology Letters.