New Delhi: Former Union Minister Arun Shourie on Friday mocked the claim that demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes being a radical measure, stating that jumping into well or committing suicide is also radical.
“Jumping in well is also radical. Suicide is also radical,” he said.
Everybody will say it is a wonderful move going by its stated objective which is to strike at black money but it was not a “thought-through” exercise, said the former BJP leader in an exclusive interview to NDTV.
“This is a strike not on black money but on legal tender of India, its currency. This is a strike on cash transactions,” he told a news channel in an interview.
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The former BJP leader in the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government said,
“People who hold this black money or black assets don’t hold it in cash…they are not going to put their money under the mattress…they are holding it abroad, and there also, they are not dollars in gunnybags. It is property, jewellery, maybe other assets which we don’t know about, maybe stock markets.”
Shourie, who has often flayed the Modi government’s policies, has strongly criticised the demonetisation of high-value currencies.
“Of course there is support because of the general impression, they don’t think consequences. By the time (people realise the consequences) some other surgical strikes may happen. People may go by the gross message but, in reality, that is not what happened.” He also went on to add that the BJP government was “being carried away with the idea of doing something.”
Reponding to Manohar Parrikar, claimed that stone pelting has gone down in unrest-hit Kashmir after the currency ban, Shourie said,
“In nine days it has happened, is it? Stone pelting demonstrations have come down gradually over a period of time. This is typical of the government; they see any sparrow and say, I have shot it down.”
He claimed that the move has been carried out in the “cycle of surgical strikes” and it may lead to smaller parties joining hands to take on the BJP in the future.
With inputs from PTI