Congress Demands Modi Apology As Nearly All Of Demonetised Notes Return To System

The Indian National Congress today demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly lying to the country, after the Reserve Bank of India said 99.3 percent of the junked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes have returned to the banking system.

The opposition party said India had to pay a “huge price” for demonetising a bulk of currency, announced suddenly by Modi on November 8, 2016.

Former finance minister P Chidambaram said more than 100 lives were lost and lakhs of jobs were destroyed due to closure of businesses after demonetisation. The Indian economy lost 1.5 percent growth that accounted for a loss of Rs 2.25 lakh crore a year, he said.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the prime minister in his 2017 Independence Day speech had claimed that more than Rs 3 lakh crore unaccounted money will come back to the system. “Modiji, will you apologise for that lie now?” he asked.

RBI, after an awfully long period of counting of returned bank notes, said today that as much as 99.3 percent of the junked notes have returned to the banking system. Of the Rs 15.41 lakh crore worth Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in circulation on November 8, 2016, when the note ban was announced, notes worth Rs 15.31 lakh crore have been returned. This meant just Rs 10,720 crore of the junked currency did not return to the system.

In a series of tweets Chidambaram, who’d been a vocal critic of demonetisation, lashed out at the government’s decision to enforce the cash purge. “Remember who had said that Rs 3 lakh crore will not come back and that will be a gain for the government?” he tweeted, taking a dig at Modi. “I suspect that the bulk of the Rs 13,000 crore is in Nepal and Bhutan and some that was lost or destroyed.”