RBI data proves Prime Minister Modi’s demonetisation failed on all fronts

On Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying that tax payers” base has expanded after demonetization, Sharma said: “If he thinks that he is a great economist, it is the biggest tragedy.

Explaining the rise in March 2017, Ravi B Goyal, Chairman and Managing Director, AGS Transact Technologies Limited said, “Digital transaction numbers having increased in the days’ post demonetisation showed slight decline across most channels in January and February”.

“The object of demonetisation was not confiscation of money”.

Jaitley stated that India is pre-dominantly high cash economy and that scenario needed to be altered towards less-cash economy.

So rely more on banking transaction and digitisation.

On the contrary, demonetisation had caused heavy losses, put millions of citizens through untold misery, even resulting in the deaths of over 100 persons while waiting for hours in queues, and left the economy in tatters, Mr. Narayanasamy said. “So there is nothing new in black money detection and every year Income Tax Department makes similar claims”, Chidambaram said.

The big question now is, where is the black money? RBI report says that the total amount of RS 1000 old notes in the market was worth Rs 15.44 lakh crore. The old notes were allowed to be deposited in banks, with unusual deposits coming under income tax scrutiny. “You can’t have a surgical solution to it”, he said, adding that if private sector cannot pay back its debts then someone else should be allowed to take over. And second, that it would curb the supply of counterfeit currency. Banks filed 361,214 such reports in 2016-17, up from 61,361 the previous year.

On being asked whether demonetisation succeeded in cracking down on black money, Jaitley replied, “It has brought a large scale of unaccounted wealth into the mainstream…”

He must apologize to the country and we will continue to force accountability on this issue, ” Mr Sharma said.

The Prime Minister had given four reasons for his decision of demonetisation-first was to fight corruption, secondly to fight black-money to eliminate black-money, thirdly to stop terror funding and fourth to eliminate or flush-out the fake Indian currency notes in circulation.

Several of Modi’s federal ministers also took to Twitter to defend the note ban, highlighting its benefits by using the hashtag #DemonetisationSuccess.

However, at that time when people on the streets were complaining about the difficulties they were facing due to cash crunch in the wake of scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes by Modi regime, Singh chose to come out from his self-imposed exile and spoke eloquently on the subject. It would be tantamount to confiscation and become RBI property, to be eventually handed over to government for the welfare of the poor.

This is at variance with what Attorney General (AG) had told the Supreme Court on. The cash that does not return to the system stands automatically confiscated.

The Aam Aadmi Party also hit out at the Modi government and claimed that extra notes worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore were deposited in banks following demonetisation. The lower payout to the government by the RBNI this year was due to printing costs RBI transferred Rs 13,140 crore to its Contingency Fund and unlike the last three years, this year there was hardly any bolstering of the reserve. The economists deserve Nobel Prize, ‘ he said in a series of tweets.