Demonetisation biggest failure of BJP govt: Congress

Congress Party on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government citing Reserve Bank of India (RBI) annual report and termed demonetisation as its biggest failure.

During a press briefing on Wednesday in Delhi, Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said, "As a consequence of demonetisation the number of fake currency which was detected was 7.6 Lakh pieces but the same figure in 2015-16 was 6.3 Lakh pieces. So as a consequence of this elaborate exercise which caused pain to million, only 1.3 Lakh extra pieces of fake currency were identified."

He also highlighted the discrepancies between the statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other ministers and said, "Prime Minister declared from ramparts of red fort that 3 lakh crores black money has been identified and his own ministers in successive replies to parliament have said that amount of undisclosed income and undeclared income is not more than 28,000 crore. As a consequence of this exercise, the dividend which is paid from RBI to Government of India (GOI) came down from Rs 65,876 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 30,659 crore in 2016-17. So the dividend also came down by almost half."

Tiwari also alleged that demonetisation had wiped out informal sectors, daily wage labourers, and MSMEs, and over 100 lives were lost during this exercise.

On November 8, 2016, the Central government had invalidated Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 banknotes, claiming it to be a crackdown on the shadow economy and use of illicit and counterfeit cash.

Earlier in the day, the RBI, in its annual report, said that out of Rs.15.41 lakh crore Specified Bank Notes(SBN), Rs.15.31 lakh crore has been recovered, thus indicating recovery of 99.30 per cent of demonetised currency.