‘Will Rahul Gandhi apologise now,’ asks BJP after demonetisation verdict

New Delhi, January 2

Following the Supreme Court judgement not faulting the government on demonetisation, the BJP on Monday demanded an apology from Congress and Rahul Gandhi for attacking the note ban.

Four judges on a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had, earlier in the day, found no flaw in the government’s decision to demonetise ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes through a gazette notification on November 8, 2016. The sole woman judge, Justice BV Nagarathna, on the Bench disagreed with the majority, saying the demonetisation exercise was “unlawful and vitiated”.

However, the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge promptly rebutted claiming that 120 people lost their lives because of demonetisation which simultaneously resulted in “many crores losing their jobs, unorganised sector getting destroyed, and no lessening of black money in the economy and an increase in fake currency”.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the majority verdict by the Supreme Court has steered clear of the question whether the objectives of the demonetisation exercise were achieved while the minority judgement pointed out the ‘illegality’ and the ‘irregularities’ in the demonetisation.

The BJP fielded former Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to hit out at the Congress leaders, especially Chidambaram, for highlighting the minority judgment. “They are ignoring with impunity the majority verdict to make incharitable and scandalous statements,” Prasad said.

‘Cleansed the economy’

Prasad also asserted that the demonetisation proved to be the “biggest blow” to terrorism by curbing terror funding. It boosted income tax and cleansed the economy, he claimed.

“It is a historic decision and is in the national interest. The Supreme Court has held a decision taken in the national interest valid. Will Rahul Gandhi now say sorry for his campaign against demonetisation? He spoke against it even abroad,” he said.

However, most Opposition parties including the Congress, NCP and the CPM pointed out that none of the objectives of demonetisation were fulfilled while it resulted in hardships to the people while striking a blow to the economy. The parties maintained that the Centre cannot absolve itself of blame for the distress the people suffered due to the decision to scrap high-value currency notes.

“Despite the (SC) verdict, the BJP government must be held accountable for the downfall of the economy due to demonetisation and the loss of many lives due to the disastrous, ill planned process,” Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesperson Clyde Crasto said.

The CPI(M) too pointed out that the majority SC verdict says nothing about the impact of such a decision.

“Demonetisation resulted in the destruction of India’s informal economy that employs crores of people. It paralysed the small-scale industrial sector, the MSMEs, destroying crores of livelihoods. Further, none of the objectives justifying this disastrous decision of unearthing black money and bringing this back from foreign banks; ending counterfeit currency; ending terror funding, corruption and reducing cash flows in the economy have been achieved. On the contrary, according to RBI, currency with public has gone up from ₹17.7-lakh crore, on the eve of demonetisation to ₹30.88 lakh crore now, i.e., an increase of 71.84 per cent,” said a CPI(M) statement.

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