Former finance minister P Chidambaram. (File Photo)
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his decision to announce note ban last year, former finance minister P Chidambaram said demonetisation was a wrong decision and the government should accept it. Citing the RBI report, the senior Congress leader said the reports revealed what he had been saying for last six months. “Finally the RBI report has revealed what I said 6 months ago,” said Chidambaram.
In its report released recently, the RBI confirmed that 8.9 crore old Rs 1,000 notes out of 632.6 crore have not been returned post the note ban initiative last November, which indicated that all but 1.4 per cent of the old Rs 1,000 notes have come back into the banking system. In an unprecedented move, Modi in November last year announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes ceased to be legal tender from midnight of November 9, following which new Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes were issued by the RBI signed by Governor Urjit Patel, as a replacement for the banned notes. RBI has now issued Rs 50 and Rs 200 notes as well.
Earlier, the former finance minister had also criticised the RBI for its recommendation of demonetisation saying that RBI ‘gained’ Rs 16,000 crore, but ‘lost’ Rs 21,000 crore in printing new note and that the economists deserve Nobel Prize. Chidambaram taking potshot at demonetisation had also tweeted “Cost of demonetisation: Add another Rs. 50,000 crore revealed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI),” in the wake of the RBI statement that it would pay Rs. 30,659 crore as dividend to the government in 2016-17, less than half of the dividend transferred a year earlier.
The currency printing presses employed with the task of printing the new notes have also asked the RBI for compensation of Rs 577 crore for what they estimate was the loss they had to incur due to the announcement of demonetisation.
