Congress terms demonetisation as ‘biggest scam’

New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) The Congress party on Thursday termed demonetisation as the "biggest scam" and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of misleading the people, saying that he had repeatedly made "false statements" on the decision to junk high-value currency.

Addressing a press conference here, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said the Prime Minister had made "false remarks" in his Independence Day speech about the quantum of black money that was unearthed after Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were scrapped on November 8 last year.

Sharma said demonetisation had led to a loss of GDP of Rs 2.25 lakh crore and the Prime Minister was "directly responsible".

"People will accept the truth, they can also accept that a mistake has been made, but it is wrong to state repeatedly that everything done was right," he said.

Sharma's remarks come after the RBI's annual report on Wednesday revealed low efficacy of the November 8 demonetisation. It said that of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore taken out of circulation, Rs 15.28 lakh crore had returned to the system by way of public deposits.

He said the Attorney General had told the Supreme Court that due to demonetisation an amount of Rs 4-5 lakh crore related to terror funding will not come back to the system.

"The government has not spoken the truth at every step. People have been misled, inconvenienced. This has been the biggest scam. Those who had illegal money, the government has helped them make it legal," Sharma said.