A day after four militants were killed in Kashmir, Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday said that despite Narendra Modi Government’s claims, note ban has “failed” to check inflow of terrorists and fake currency from Pakistan.
The encounter and reports of Pakistan pushing fake Rs 2,000 notes in India via Bangladesh were proof enough that the ill-conceived demonetisation is not helping curb terror, as claimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.
Stronger and sterner measures were needed to ensure fool-proof border security if the country and its people were to be guarded against frequent external assaults, said Punjab’s former chief minister.
He said that demonetisation, which continues to create “serious problems” for the common man more than three months of its announcement, was not the solution to a serious problem like terrorism.
“The note ban had completely failed in its vowed objectives of cracking down on terrorism and black money,” Capt Amarinder claimed.
Apart from continuing incursions from across the border, there was sufficient ground to believe that black money remained a serious concern despite a whopping 86 per cent old currency getting frozen overnight following the demonetisation, he said citing reports of frequent seizures of large sums of unaccounted for new currency.
Capt Amarinder also questioned the continued imposition of cash curbs on the people, demanding to know how depriving the common man of his own hard-earned money was helping the government crackdown on terrorism and black money.
He said that despite repeated demands from the Congress to come out in the open with facts and figures to substantiate his claims of the success of the scheme, the Prime Minister has failed to disclose the total amount of black money that had come into the government kitty after the note ban.
This shows that the demonetisation had failed to achieve any positive results, Capt Amarinder claimed while accusing the Prime Minister of recklessly abusing power to plunge the country into total chaos through his note ban move which allegedly claimed several innocent lives.
Thousands of people had lost their jobs, small businesses had to shut down and investments had come to a freeze in the wake of the demonetisation, he claimed.
Modi should have spent some time analysing the pros and cons of the move before initiating it, or at least taken the trouble to check out its impact in the days and weeks after the announcement, he said.
Capt Amarinder urged the PM to “shed his ego” and take immediate steps to ease the “woes of the demonetisation-hit people” of the country.
“Instead of spending his time targeting his opponents on alleged frivolous issues, Modi should take stock of the situation arising out of his senseless policy and find ways of addressing it,” he added.