Note ban to boost tax inflow, govt spend, says Amit Shah

He says this will lead to increased tax revenue; enable govt to spend more on development projects

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah said on Friday that the government’s demonetisation decision and push towards a ‘less cash’ economy would lead to increased tax revenue, enabling more spending on development projects and poor-friendly schemes.

He said the BJP was on course to win elections in all the five states scheduled to go to the polls in February and March.

Delivering his inaugural address at the opening of the two-day BJP national executive meeting here, Shah said government expenditure on development projects in recent years was on average between Rs 4.1 lakh crore and Rs 4.7 lakh crore, from an annual budget of Rs 18-19 lakh crore. 

“If you don’t increase the tax net, you will rule the way earlier rulers have ruled, and be unable to make a difference,” party leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar, quoting from Shah’s speech, said.

These comments come barely a month before the presentation of the general Budget by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on February 1.

The meeting also passed a political resolution and the party’s parliamentary board “felicitated” the PM for providing “historic” leadership in recent months. It referred to the army’s strike on insurgents’ camps across the Line of Control after the Uri attack of September 18, and the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes. In the context of note ban, the BJP chief said “decisions have to be taken with a long-term view”, and stressed that a large majority of the people, despite having faced difficulties, stood by the Modi government’s decision. 

The political resolution noted that the ‘surgical strikes’ have “had the required effect on our neighbour” as there is “near normal silence on the India-Pakistan border in the last few weeks and the initiative taken by Pakistan to call for DGMO (Director General of Military Operations)-level talks.” It said PM Modi will continue to demonstrate zero tolerance for terrorism and India “reserves every right to respond to such threats in an appropriate and out-of-the-box manner in future also.”

On demonetisation, the resolution observed: “We (the BJP) are here not merely for reform. Reform is good, but it is largely about tinkering the existing system. PM Modi’s vision is transformative.” It said that “a new culture of honesty, discipline, commitment and patriotism is the end goal” of the measures by the Modi government.

The resolution noted the attacks on BJP workers have increased in Bengal and Kerala. Pointing to recent “communal riots” in Dhulagarh, West Bengal, the resolution accused some governments in the states of pursuing “extreme appeasement politics” which has led to “severe communal tension and strife in these states”. It said rioters in Dhulagarh torched houses and shouted slogans like “Pakistan Zindabad”, or long live Pakistan, while the state police looked the other way.

The national executive meeting comes three months after the earlier one at Kozhikode on September 23 -25, where the Uri attack, in which about 20 soldiers were killed, had dominated the proceedings. It was also a time when political parties were questioning the PM for not delivering on his promise to crack down on black money. Shah said the ‘surgical strike’ and ‘note ban’ decisions had left the opposition clueless.

Shah told the body, comprising a little over 100 party leaders from across the country, that the BJP would win the coming elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and even Manipur. While the BJP has termed its successes in recent civic polls as a referendum in favour of note ban decision, senior party leader Prakash Javadekar said it was for the media to interpret whether the results of assembly polls to five states, when they are announced, would also be a referendum on demonetisation.

The party chief also said 2,031 party workers had been selected to devote the next 12 months in the little over 200 seats the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had lost in 2014. The plan is to compensate its potential losses in the north in the 2019 national poll by victories on seats it lost in 2014.