Chief Ministers' panel on demonetisation to meet today

The Chief Ministers' Committee on demonetisation, which is headed by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.Chandrababu Naidu, will meet in the national capital today.

The panel was set up by the Niti Aayog on November 26. While Naidu was made convenor, the Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim and Puducherry were made members of the committee.

Attempts were also made to include Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, but they declined.

Some recent flip-flops by Naidu on the issue have added to the confusion.

Naidu has repeatedly appealed to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and local bankers to adopt a humanitarian approach to prevent inconvenience to the people by delivering more number of small currency notes to rural areas.

Stating that cashless and digital banking transaction is the only alternative to end the crisis, Naidu, who is spending more than three to four hours a day monitoring the cash distribution system, has asked officials to think innovatively to address the crisis and to encourage urban people to switch over to mobile banking transactions and distribute the available small currency to farmers in rural areas to carry out agricultural operations for the current Rabi season.

He said that cashless transactions were successfully implemented in all 29,000 fair price shops in the state and the dealers of FP shops were appointed as banking correspondents to solve currency problem in rural areas.