Demonetisation was not a “surgical strike” on black money, as claimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but a “fire-bombing” of the common people of the country by Mr. Modi’s “anti-poor” government to save his corporate friends, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday.
He alleged that the currency ban was “planned” and executed by the PM to cover up for his failure to bring back black money stashed in foreign accounts, and to waive off a debt of Rs. 8 lakh crore of his “rich friends”, the “one per cent of the population”, Mr. Gandhi said.
‘A move against the people’
Intensifying his attack on Mr. Modi, Mr. Gandhi described demonetisation as a step taken not to fight black money or corruption but against 99 per cent of the population — the farmers, labourers, poor and the middle class.
“Who has the black money — the one per cent rich or the rest of the Indians?” Mr. Gandhi asked at a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur, adjoining Varanasi.
“Modiji cannot take back the money from the defaulters, these top families, as they have made him...”
Mr. Gandhi repeated a mantra in English and Hindi to connect with the masses in the poll-bound State. “All cash is not black, all black money is not cash.”
He said, “When a labourer gets money in cash that is not black money, when a middle-class person goes to buy sweets, the money he uses to pay for it is not black money...” Mr. Gandhi also took a jibe at the PM while reminding him that he had promised to bring back black money stashed in “foreign accounts” and “not in the form of six per cent cash”.
