Rahul Gandhi sharpens attack on PM Narendra Modi over demonetisation

Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, on the second anniversary of demonetisation on Thursday, launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by terming decision as a "planned conspiracy" and 'criminal financial scam' allegedly aimed at helping his "suit-booted friends' to 'whiten' their black money.

In a tweet, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said: "Demonetisation was a planned conspiracy. This scam was a shrewd scheme to whiten the black money of Prime Minister's suit-booted friends. Nothing was innocent in this scandal. Deriving any other meaning to this exercise would be an insult to the nation."

Later in a statement, Gandhi said that the day November 8 would forever go down in the history of India as a day of infamy. 'India will discover, no matter how the government tries to hide it, that demonetisation wasn't just an ill-conceived and poorly executed economic policy with innocent intent, but a carefully planned, criminal financial scam,' he said in a statement, issued by the All India Congress Committee (AICC).

"Demonetisation was a tragedy...Demonetisation is unique in the history of our tragedies because it was a self-inflicted, suicidal attack that destroyed millions of lives and ruined thousand of India's small businesses. The worst hits by demonestisation were the poorest of the poor, who were forced to queue for days, to exchange their meagre savings," he added.

The Congress chief also claimed that more than a hundred and twenty Indians lost their lives in those queues lined up to exchange the banned notes outside the banks. He added, "Prime Minister Modi's demonetisation cost India over one and a half million jobs and wiped out at least one per cent from our Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."

Gandhi scion also intensified his attack on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley by calling him "incompetent." He said, "On the second anniversary of the Prime Minister's monumental blunder, the Government's spin-doctors, including our incompetent Finance Minister, have the unenviable task of defending an indefensible, criminal policy."

A few hours back, the Congress stated that the exercise which the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre undertook in 2016 had tarnished the image of India globally.

On November 8, 2016, the Centre had declared Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes as non-legal and introduced new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. Since then, various opposition parties have been highly critical of the Centre's move, while the members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have backed the decision.

On the second anniversary of demonetisation on Thursday, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley posted a strong defense of demonetisation, saying that the note ban had a huge impact on formalising the Indian economy.

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