Take matter to the masses instead of President, CPI-M tells opposition

The Left parties on Friday refrained from joining the opposition delegation that met President Pranab Mukherjee to seeking his intervention in the demonetisation issue, advising their countrparts to take the matter to the people instead.

The delegation comprised the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Janata Dal-United among others, but the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Communist Party of India as well as the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Paty and the Nationalist Congress Party stayed away.

Defending the decision to skip the meet, CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said instead of approaching the President, the matter should be taken to the masses.

"What would the President do in this matter. We have already said that the President can't do much in this matter," he told the media.

"Meeting the President is not a good idea. Rather the matter should be taken to the common people whose sufferings have been never ending because of demonetisation," he said.

Noting that the common people and farmers are facing lots of trouble on demonetisation, Yechury said: "Till the same amount of old currency demonetised from the economy does not get replaced with the new one, the government should allow it to be used in legal transactions."

Later on Twitter, Yechury flayed the Modi government for not accepting the "mistake of demonetisation".

"Instead of accepting the mistake on demonetisation, the government is hell bent on making a bad situation worse by announcing more rules on the fly.

"No amount of spin can cover for the reality of an economy brought to a halt by government, the social and economic turmoil caused to the people," he said in a series on tweets.

--IANS

and/vd