Former Chief Minister of Maharashtra and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan alleged that the real objective of note ban decision was to benefit the American fintech corporations which were facing rough weather at home.
Addressing the workshop held for Congress party cadre at Shamshabad here on Saturday, Mr. Chavan said the fintech corporations were looking for new markets when India, under the stewardship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the ‘Better Than Cash Alliance’ (BTCA) in September, 2015.
Prior to that in 2011, US Congress had enacted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Durbin amendment, which had capped the fee charged to retailers for debit card processing. The Act and the amendment caused loss of billions of US dollars to the payment companies.
Black money
In November 2015, subsequent to India joining the BTCA, an MoU was signed between the Finance Ministry and USAID towards expanding digital payments in India.
Chavan lambasted the repeated shifts by the Prime Minister about the aim of note ban, starting from curbing of black money to digitisation of economy, and wondered why he didn’t cite digitisation on November 8 when he had announced the note ban.
“In the history of mankind, there was no incident prior to note ban where government decision had affected 100 crore people,” he said, and questioned what took RBI nine months to reveal the actual figures of the deposit of old notes in bank. He alleged that the ₹ 2000 notes were brought into circulation for handling of black money for distribution in Uttar Pradesh elections.
Though the RBI claimed ₹16,000 crore did not arrive into the banks, Mr. Chavan said, it could include the ₹ 8,000 crore held with cooperative banks, and the currency sent to countries such as Nepal and Bhutan.
More corruption
As per the statistics, corruption has increased after the note ban, and so have terrorist attacks, leaving all the express purposes of demonetisation unfulfilled.
AICC spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, during his address, said only 0.003 % was fake currency, of the notes returned to banks.
For ₹ 16,000 crore savings, ₹ 25,000 crore was spent on printing new currency, and the increase in digital transactions was recorded only at ₹ 10 lakh crore.
GST slabs
Talking on GST, he said the bill that was first mooted by the UPA government had only two slabs up to 18 % and exempted many other items from taxation.
He termed both the Prime Minister and the Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao as ‘Tughlaqs’. He said in Telangana, it is only the regime of four people. Instead of building a new secretariat, the money could be spent on buying land for the landless and building homes, he said.
Former Central minister and senior leader S. Jaipal Reddy spoke on the links between BJP and RSS, and criticised the TRS government for its failed promises.
Chief Minister of Pondicherry V. Narayana Swamy addressed the party cadre too.
