In view of the prevailing crisis occurring due to demonetisation drive, the Civil Defence volunteers would be deployed in the national capital to felicitate people who have been standing at queues outside banks, said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday even as the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das announced that a task force is being set up for re-calibration of ATMs to expedite the process of cash transactions.
He said that a special one day session of the legislative assembly has been called on Tuesday where the Delhi government would analyse and discuss about the situation and accordingly take steps to mitigate the present crisis.
"Today we convened an emergency cabinet meeting, where it was decided that we will conduct a one day emergency session will to analyse the situation and accordingly take decisions," Kejriwal said,
"Civil defence volunteers, a part of Delhi government, will be deployed in the state to help people who have been standing in queues with regard to providing refreshments, filling out forms, helping senior citizens and many other things," he added.
Holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible for the present cash crunch, the Delhi Chief Minister said the Centre was unprepared in dealing with the crisis.
"Today Centre announced that the Indian Air Force will be used to carry and distribute currency notes. It shows that government did not have any game plane to tackle the crisis. The government was unprepared in executing its plan. It shows that the government is in a precarious situation," Kejriwal said.
He said that despite Prime Minister Modi's claim that the demonetisation drive would bring sleepless nights to the rich, the 'aam aadmi' (common man), instead, are having sleepless nights standing outside the ATMs.
"Despite the Prime Mister's claim that the rich are having sleepless nights, it seems that the common people have been having sleepless nights. We can see them sleeping outside bank ATMs and its is Prime Minister Modi's friends who are sleeping peacefully,"
"The nation is unable to understand that by curbing 500 and 1000 notes and introducing 2000 notes, how will corruption and black money will get reduced," he added.
Earlier, Das said the task force will have representatives of department of Financial Services and the Ministry of Home Affairs, adding the task force has been instructed to work out a strategy to expedite the whole process of re-calibration of the ATMs so that the disbursement of cash at the field level is substantially improved.
"The banks have been advised to increase the cash holding limit of the banking correspondents to at least 50,000 rupees. In other cases, the banks would be encouraged to increase the cash holding limits beyond 50,000 rupees in appropriate cases. The reach of distribution of cash especially in the rural areas will improve substantially," he added.
Das said to augment this further, the bank correspondents will be permitted by the banks to draw cash multiple times in a single day.
Normal life has been thrown out of gear as long serpentine queues were still visible outside banks to exchange currency notes.
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