Autocrat PM has created financial chaos in country: Congress

The Congress on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having pushed the country into a "financial chaos" through demonetisation and called him an autocrat.

"The powerful autocratic Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has pushed the country into a financial chaos by overnight reducing their hard earned money to worthless pieces of paper," Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said here.

"Modiji has assumed that a clear majority in Parliament has given him a pass to act on his whims and fancies. But in a democracy the decisions have to be taken as per peoples' wishes," he added.

He said the black money that the government was targetting was not with the people who are wasting hours standing in long queues at banks and ATMs, but with "a handful of suited-booted friends of yours" who are not standing in queues.

"What is the reason that none of your corporate friends, your officers, your cabinet ministers your chief ministers or BJP leaders is seen standing in the queues outside banks? Is it not indicative of where the black money is actually lying?" Surjewala said.

He dared the Prime Minister to make public all the transactions done in the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) national and regional units bank accounts between March and September this year.

"These bank details will show how much money was changed before the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes was announced. Isse doodh ka doodh aur pani ka pani ho jayega (It will make the picture clear)," he said.

Surjewala said that before demonetisation, the Modi government had already hiked the remittances limit by 130 per cent in a financial year.

Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), any citizen of India is allowed to freely remit up to $2,50,000 in a financial year. In 2013 this limit was $75,000.

--IANS

mak/rn