New Delhi: Armed with the RBI report on demonetisation, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the entire exercise and said it was nothing but a huge scam.
Gandhi said Modi had promised to the nation that with demonetisation, black money, fake currency and terror financing would end, but the RBI report has established that it completely failed on all the three counts.
“The result has been that all the money came back to the RBI. The PM must answer for this. Why did you inflict such an injury on the nation, its youth, its shopkeepers and its small businesses,” Gandhi asked while addressing a press conference at the party headquarters.
Gandhi said the PM cannot even apologise for the note ban, as it was not a mistake, but done intentionally to destroy the poor by giving their money to 15-20 richest crony capitalists.
"This can't be called a jumla, but it's a scam. Modi was right in saying that in 70 years what no other government couldn't do, his government did," he said.
The Congress chief alleged that demonetisation was always intended to help the most corrupt people in the nation convert their black money into white. “The PM conspired with top industrialists. He took all the money from citizen's pockets and gave it to crony capitalists of this country so they can repay their bad loans,” he said.
The BJP responded by saying that invalidation of the non-deposited currency was not the only object of demonetisation. The larger purpose, the party said, was to move India from a tax non-compliant society to a compliant one.
“This necessarily involved formalisation of the economy and a blow to the black money,” the party said in a statement.
RBI, in its annual report released on Wednesday, stated that as many as 99.3 percent of the old Rs 500 and 1,000 notes, that were banned overnight in November 2016, have returned to the banks.
Of the Rs 15.41 lakh crore worth of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in circulation before November 8, 2016, notes worth Rs 15.31 lakh crore have been returned, according to the Central Bank’s report.
Gandhi also attacked the Modi government over the Rafale issue. He alleged it was a "clear cut" case where the prime minister is "lying" and cited a joint statement made by the PM and French President Francois Hollande in 2015 where it was made clear that the aircraft and associated systems and weapons would be delivered on the "same configuration" as had been tested and approved by the Indian Air Force.
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