Calling the move of demonetisation a “Tughlaki Farmaan”, Congress leader and former Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari said the immediate effects of demonetisation could lead to “social unrest” in the country.
He said this move is against the national interest of the country. He added he foresees a social unrest due to economic destabilisation. Tewari was speaking to senior journalist and former member of Parliament, HK Dua, at his book launch Decoding a decade 2006-2016 on Wednesday at India International Centre here.
“Somebody stands up and says that from 12 o’ clock you are hereby stripped off your currency...There are two aspects to it in my opinion. One is of its complete illegality. Twice earlier, it happened by ordinance and legislation for a specific reason. In my opinion and the courts may come to a different conclusion, you cannot introduce a Rs 2,000 note without amending the RBI Act and including Rs 2,000 as one of the currency which can be assured,” he said.
“...Because of the economic slowdown, when you see the layoffs taking place, there will be a huge social unrest. There is a huge pain in the economy which is not going to ease in the short term. Now, if this is going to have certain long terms effects, I do not know but in this short term, I think the country is going to take a large hit.”
While saying that he could be wrong, Tewari said “without invoking financial emergency, you cannot impose arbitrary limits on people withdrawing their own money from their own banks.”
While responding to Dua on the issue of Demonetisation further, the Congress leader said that he was “worried that this move might undermine the confidence people have in the rupee.”
“My worry is a bit different in 1978 we demonetised but if demonetisation was the antidote to black money, how do we have, by government estimates Rs 600 crore of black money in the country today. So, this means in order to do away with the black money, do we have to make demonetisation a regular feature every five years.”