Former Union Minister Arun Shourie. (PTI file)
Arun Shourie, former Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, on Tuesday blamed Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation decision as the reason behind the present economic slowdown. He was also critical of the implementation of GST. In an interview to NDTV, Shourie said Modi is running a government of “2.5 persons”- whom he described as “Amit Shah, PM Modi and an in-house lawyer (Arun Jaitley)”.
Shourie claimed that major economic policies are being decided in “a sealed echo chamber” of “2.5 persons”. Shourie, who has been sidelined by the present BJP regime, was more critical about demonetisation. He said, it was the “largest money-laundering scheme ever” planned and implemented by the government itself. He dubbed demonetisation as an “idiotic jolt”. Reason: Shourie said that 99% of the banned currency notes were returned to banks, suggesting that the big move of Modi government failed to destroy the black or untaxed money.
The former Union minister was also critical of GST. He counted it as one of the “misdeeds” of Modi government. Though Shourie said it was an important reform, he claimed it has been poorly implemented. He pointed out that rules have been amended seven times within three months.
Shourie’s remarks on Modi government’s economic decisions come close on the heels of a similar criticism by another former Union minister of BJP, Yashwant Sinha. In an article in The Indian Express recently, Sinha had blamed Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for pushing the economy towards a mess. He was highly critical of Modi government’s decisions like noteban and GST implementation.
“Sector after sector of the economy is in distress, demonetisation has proved to be an unmitigated economic disaster, a badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with businesses and sunk many of them and countless millions have lost their jobs with hardly any new opportunities coming the way of the new entrants to the labour market,” Sinha had written.
