Goyal forced NABARD to issue statement to hide demonetisation scam: Congress

The Congress on Saturday alleged Finance Minister Piyush Goyal had "forced" NABARD to issue a statement to hide the demonetisation scam by BJP President Amit Shah and demanded a thorough investigation.

"Piyush Goyal forced the NABARD to issue a press statement, which far from addressing the core issue of the allegation looked like a BJP statement embedded on Nabard's website, since it only sought to defend Amit Shah," Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera told media at a press conference here.

He alleged that NABARD deliberately omitted its own RTI findings which reflected that a whopping Rs 3,118.51 crore worth of old notes were deposited within these five days in 11 Gujarat Co-operative Banks closely associated with BJP leaders.

"And district Co-operative banks in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled states and its allies ruled states had received a massive 64.18 per cent i.e Rs 22,270.80 crore of the entire amount deposited in these banks in just five days," Khera said.

The Congress leader's remarks came a day after the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD) attributed the highest deposits at ADCB to the latter's massive size and performance, saying it conducted 100 per cent verification which revealed that the bank had complied with all the KYC guidelines of the RBI while accepting the demonetised notes.

IANS had done a story on Thursday based on a RTI reply which said that a bank with Amit Shah as a director collected the highest amount of banned notes among DCCBs (District Central Cooperative Banks).

Khera said: "Goyal tweeted a piece of 'Yellow Journalism' directly taken out of the Sangh eco-system and tried extremely hard to somehow clutch at straws by holding on to such childish gibberish - a hallmark of RSS-BJP intellectual universe."

"It would have pertinent for the Modi government to answer our simple questions and order a thorough investigation in the spike of demonetised note deposits in the district co-operative banks."

He also called on Goyal to "shed this holier-than-thou attitude and as temporary Finance Minister, order an impartial enquiry into the entire gamut of transactions during Modi made disaster of demonetisation, which is now turning out to be the biggest scam of the century".

--IANS

aks/vd