The sudden decision on Tuesday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonetise the currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations to curb black money left students, common people, shopkeepers, commuters stumped.
A student of Dyal Singh College, Simran, said, "I could not take my lunch because the canteen owner refused to accept Rs 500 that I had."
A tourist couple Christoph and Sabrina, who hails from Germany, said, "Today is our last day in India, and we are helpless. We were in shock when we came to know about the development on Tuesday as we had only Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes with us."
Shopkeepers Sanjay and Vashisth said, "We are not accepting Rs 500 and 1,000 since morning."
Niket Kumar, a student, said, "I ordered three books on Amazon a few days ago and today I received a call from the courier boy who said he would take amount only in Rs 100 denomination. This is really ridiculous as I cannot receive the books because I have two notes of thousand denominations."
Saurav Kumar Goyal, manager of a petrol pump at Civil lines said, "We are not able to pay even to our employee as Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 left with us and all the banks are now closed. We are not running out of Rs 100 note and now decided that we fill fuel worth not less than Rs 500."
Also, he said nobody wants to pay by card. "We have a huge collection of Rs 500 and 1,000 in less than an hour," he said.
"I am confused on what to do now. We have several transactions to make in the next two days for purchasing fruits and vegetables from the market, and depositing of tuition fees, for which we have to withdraw money," said Chandan Singh, a resident of Dwarka, while waiting outside an ATM.
However, café coffee day manager, Rahul, praised Modi's move and called it a historic one. "Today we collected a cash of Rs 75 only and as compared to other days the customer flow is low. Most of the customers used
debit cards."