With an eye on the imminent Assembly polls, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took the lead by announcing compensation for the 'poor people' who died in queues outside banks and ATMs waiting to exchange their old currency notes with the new ones post- demonetisation.
The catch in this scheme is that it is limited to only poor people. However, the government has not specified in its statement about the criteria to judge poverty and who will be eligible for the scheme.
“The family members of all those poor who died in queue waiting to get their own money from ATMs or to exchange old money from banks will get an ex-gratia assistance of Rs 2 lakh each,” the CM said in a written statement issued in lucknow on Wednesday.
The CM had earlier criticised the Centre for culling high value notes and alleged that a majority of the population was facing severe hardships due to the non-availability of cash in banks, post offices and ATMs.
“These poor people stand for hours outside ATMs and banks and when their turn comes, the cash is dried out. This is happening with people almost everyday,” he said.
Yadav said that it was unfortunate that people are frustrated after not getting cash from the banks and ATMs for the past one month and several persons have have died standing in queues.
Akhilesh Yadav also announced a compensation of Rs five-lakh to one Razia of Aligarh, who immolated herself after failing to get cash from an ATM for three days. The compensation would be sanctioned from the CM's discretionary fund.
As per report, Razia could not exchange six Rs 500 old notes from the bank in Aligarh. later, she torched herself and died whuile undergoing treatment at a hospital in New Delhi on December 4.
Meanwhile, a report here said that most bank braches in the state capital witnessed cash crunch. Some of them were giving only Rs 10,000 to a customer against the norm of Rs 24,000 while a majority have exhausted their cash.