Congress Chief Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that the 'demonetisation' move of the BJP government had only helped the prime minister's crony capitalist friends.
Rahul's allegation on Prime Minister Modi came a day after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that 99 per cent of the demonetised currency had been returned to the system.
"Demonetisation was nothing but a huge scam. The evidence is slowly coming out", said Rahul Gandhi.
While addressing the media , Rahul said, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out demonetisation to help 15-20 of his crony capitalist friends. That was the aim of demonetisation. PM's friends converted black money into white money during demonetisation."
While referring to an RTI reply which said that the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB) had exchanged junked notes worth Rs 745.58 crore in five days after demonetisation was announced, the Congress leader took a swipe at the Prime Minister and said, "PM Modi was right when he said his government had done what no one could do in 70 years. He must answer why he did this."
On Wednesday, the RBI claimed to have received Rs 15.31 lakh crore of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, or 99.3 per cent of the Rs 15.417 lakh crore worth of notes which were in circulation as on November 8, 2016, when the government announced demonetisation.
This effectively means that just Rs 10,720 crore of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes failed to come back to the RBI, as against expectations that well over Rs 3 lakh crore of black money would not return to the banking system.
On industrialist Anil Ambani filing defamation suits against several Congress leaders, he said, "Anil Ambani can file as many defamation suits he wants but he cannot change the truth, which is, note ban was implemented to help 15-20 crony capitalists."
