Friday 19 / April / 2024
Patna: Congress on Sunday demanded a white paper from the Centre on the demonetisation move which it claimed is the "biggest scam of India" and sought a probe into it by a Joint Parliamentary Committee.
"We want to know with whom did the Central government hold discussion about demonetisation. The government should issue a white paper on this," senior party leader Digvijay Singh told reporters here.
"A Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) should probe the entire issue of demonetisation which helped BJP and its men convert black money into assets," he said.
Singh alleged that even the Prime Minister's Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian and other officials were in the dark about the impending demonetisation.
"Some people had information in advance which is evident from the fact that Rs10 million were deposited in BJP's account in a Kolkata bank in addition to the party buying land in Bihar and Odisha," he claimed. Singh, a Rajya Sabha member, was in the state capital as part of the party's strategy to get people acquainted with the Congress' view on demonetisation. He was accompanied by Bihar Congress chief and Bihar Education Minister Ashok Choudhary, Sadanand Singh, Dilip Kumar Choudhary, H. K. Verma and others.
Terming demonetisation as the "biggest scam of India", Singh alleged that Punjab BJP's legal cell co-convenor Sanjeev Kamboj had put his photograph on social media with wads of new notes of Rs 2,000 that raises a question mark on the BJP leaders having free access to new currency notes when the common people are standing in lines to withdraw money. He pointed out that the Modi government increased the "limit of foreign remittances from India" from 75,000 to 250,000 US Dollars, and alleged that the decision led to an outflow of nearly Rs30 billion from the country only in one year prior to demonetisation.
"Whose money was sent out is yet to be disclosed," Singh said. Asserting that the demonetisation move was an utter failure of governance, the Congress veteran said that the decision was taken in a haste which not only created "economic anarchy and chaos" but also made the entire nation stand in queues to withdraw their hard-earned money. The decision also helped counterfeit currency getting "legalised" in the process, Singh said while explaining that out of Rs 14.50 lakh crore of scrapped notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, Rs 10 lakh crore has already been deposited in banks and this includes the counterfeit currency in huge volume. The very objective of demonetisation which is to mop up of black money, counterfeit currency and terror funding was defeated, he said.
So far 80 people died across the country, Singh claimed adding that the government changed its guidelines vis-a-vis the implementation of demonetisation 105 times till date, which has caused immense hardship and inconvenience to the people. On Nitish Kumar's support of the demonetisation move, Singh said, "both Congress and Nitish Kumar are supporting the demonetisation.
My party is opposing the poor implementation of the scheme and Nitish Kumar also talked about the government's lack of preparedness to deal with the post-demonetisation situation. Where is the contradiction?". He also demanded that the case of Mahesh Shah and two other cases in Hyderabad should be monitored by a Supreme Court-appointed SIT which is probing black money.
