Demonetisation a scam, will be investigated with change of govt: Anand Sharma

BHOPAL: Former Union minister and deputy leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha

Anand Sharma

on Saturday said that demonetisation was a scam that will be investigated with change of government. “I charge the Prime Minister that demonetisation was a scam and once the change of government takes place, this scam will be investigated and accountability will be fixed,” he said.

Anand Sharma was speaking to reporters here on Saturday afternoon. He was answering PM Modi’s allegation that Congress attacked him over demonetisation because people close to the party were adversely affected by the decision.

Addressing the election public meeting in Jabalpur on Friday, the Prime Minister alleged, “Real estate prices fell due to demonetisation affecting people close to the Congress who invested in realty sector. Congress attacked me and launched a campaign showing people in long queues when I started taking action against black money and corruption.”

Replying to the PM’s accusation, Congress leader Anand Sharma said, “It was farmers, poor people and small businesses that were destroyed. I had told PM Modi even then that money belongs to the people of India, don’t insult them. India has almost seven lakh villages and while there are 1 lakh 38 thousand branches of public sector banks in the country, 78% of these are in urban areas. It is the farmers, housewives and small traders of the rural areas who do not keep their money in banks and they got were hit by demonetisation.”

Anand Sharma argued that those people who lost their lives while standing in the queue were the ones who were affected, girls who committed suicide because they could not get married, and patients who lost their lives because they could not pay hospital bills during demonetisation who were affected.

They then charged, “It was the BJP and its leaders who set-up a national project of

money laundering

during demonetisation. “How come 99.5% of cash reached banks and how? We did not see BJP leaders in the queues and yet so many persons were caught from Mumbai, Gujarat, Lucknow, Kashi (Varanasi) to Bangalore. Take out a list of these persons and see who they are and how many of them are from the BJP. I charge the Prime Minister that demonetisation was a scam.”

He said with the change of government at the Centre, demonetisation will be investigated. The Congress leader further said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is responsible for the “monumental mismanagement of the Indian economy.”

“Businesses started closing after demonetisation and people lost their jobs. They went back to the villages where only MNREGA helped to feed the crores,” he said. The senior Congress leader said that the economy had not even recovered from the demonetization effect when came another bad decision in the form of GST.

“He says GST was a unanimous decision but he spoke to former AICC president Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh only once on it. Congress had said that the highest rate of GST should be 18% and tax slab for commodities used by poor persons should be kept low,” he said. “The GST came with five slabs and no where in the world had it been implemented like this.”