Rs 2,000 notes withdrawn to divert attention from BJP's defeat: SP's Yadav

Samajwadi Party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav on Tuesday alleged the move to withdraw Rs 2,000 currency notes from circulation has been taken to divert attention from the ruling BJP's defeat in the Karnataka assembly elections.

Yadav was referring to the Reserve Bank of India's announcement last week to withdraw the Rs 2,000 currency notes from circulation. The RBI gave the public time till September 30 to either deposit such notes in accounts or exchange them at banks.

Responding to queries on the move, Yadav said, "They (BJP) do not understand what should be done and what should not be done. They have become disoriented. This has been done because they lost badly in the Karnataka elections. This new trick is to divert the attention of the people."

Dubbing the move as a "Tughlaqi farmaan (diktat)", the SP leader said, "During our student days, we studied in our history class that Muhammad bin Tughlaq first shifted his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad and then back to Delhi saying that there was no water to drink. The ban on the Rs 2,000 note is like that Tughlaqi farmaan."

"After banning the earlier Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes (during demonetisation), the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes were printed. Rs 1,500 crores were spent only for printing Rs 2,000 notes and now all that will go in vain," he said, adding that the government was only wasting thousands of crores of rupees.