The Union government’s decision to demonetise currency in November last year was a “monumental blunder”, which crippled the country’s economic condition, said R. Dhruvanarayan, MP for Chamarajanagar.
Referring to the Reserve Bank of India’s claim that almost 99% of the scrapped ₹1,000 and ₹500 notes had been deposited in the banks, he said the country’s economy suffered a huge setback on account of the “ill-thought” demonetisation exercise.
“Around 20 lakh people lost their jobs while a large number of industries, particularly small scale industries, closed down and another 132 people lost their lives on account of demonetisation,” he told presspersons here on Sunday.
The country’s GDP growth rate dipped to 5.7% in April-June 2017 quarter from the preceding quarter’s 6.1% and 7.1% in the corresponding quarter last year, Mr. Dhruvanarayan said laying the blame squarely at the doorstep of demonetisation, which the former PM, Manmohan Singh, had described as “organised loot.” The RBI, which had taken up the task of printing new notes after demonetisation, had incurred an expenditure of almost ₹8,000 crore, which is about ₹4,500 crore more than the amount spent last year. When asked why the senior Congress leadership, including its national Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had failed to highlight the lapse by the BJP in the regard, he said Mr Gandhi too had criticised the PM in this regard.
He said the BJP Government at the Centre will bite the dust in the next Lok Sabha elections. Most of its programmes appeared to be “corporate-friendly,” he said. Also, the Centre had brought down the allocation for various schemes, including the MNREGA, he said.