Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday demanded a ‘criminal investigation’ by a Special Investigating Team (SIT) into demonetisation and its fallout. Addressing a press conference at Nagpur, the former Finance Minister posed the following questions to the Government:
Published: 13 Dec 2016, 3:22 PM IST
As many as 45 crore people in this country, said Chidambaram, depended on daily wages. While 15 crore of them work for others and are paid wages, the remaining 30 crore are on their own and do odd jobs as loaders, masons, plumbers, milkmen, vegetable vendors and so on. These are the people who have been hit the hardest by the Government’s decision to suddenly withdraw 86% of the currency in circulation.
Dismissing the Government’s plea of ‘secrecy’, the former Finance Minister pointed out that at least 100 officers were involved every year in preparing the union budget and yet nothing was ever ‘leaked’. So the Prime Minister not consulting others for the sake of secrecy, he quipped, did not wash.
Surely the Prime Minister could have consulted former finance minister Yashwant Sinha at least, he asked, adding ‘he is their own man’. Or Manmohan Singh. “He would not have leaked it,” said Chidambaram.
Published: 13 Dec 2016, 3:22 PM IST
Within hours of Chidambaram’s press conference, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hit back by saying that during 2004-14 currency notes of high value denomination went up from 36% to 86% and the NDA was trying to return to low value currency notes in circulation. The Government was committed to remonetise currency notes as fast as possible, he added and declared that the Government was ready for a debate on the issue in Parliament.
Published: 13 Dec 2016, 3:22 PM IST
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Published: 13 Dec 2016, 3:22 PM IST