Protesting the Centre's decision to demonetise high-value notes, Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress today staged a demonstration here demanding that district cooperative banks be allowed to change the invalid Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
The protest, in front of Congress office, was led by state Youth Congress chief Kunal Choudhry.
The district cooperative banks be allowed to change the notes in the interest of farmers, the protesters said.
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Terming the decision of demonetising as "Tughlaqui", Choudhry alleged that it has claimed 34 lives in the country so far.
Congress MLA Jitu Patwari has also written a letter to the Prime Minister demanding that the facility of exchanging notes be extended to the district cooperative banks, as nearly 60 per cent of farmers have accounts in these banks.
Choudhry said if a decision was not taken, Youth Congress would raise the issue in Delhi tomorrow.
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Surendranath Singh Thakur took out a rally in support of the demonetisation in New Market area.
Ramesh said it was "wrong" to say that the UPA government
did nothing on the issue of black money.
"Prime Minister says that NDA carried out an attack on Black Money. In 2.5 yrs, they have brought out Rs 1,25,000 lakh crore of black money. During the last two years of UPA, black money worth Rs 1,31,000 crore was unearthed. When the PM says that the UPA did nothing, he is completely wrong."
He also rubbished the talk of the demonetisation move being brought to weed out counter-feit currency.
"With only 0.02 per cent of the currency in circulation being fake, can this demonetisation be seen as an attack on counterfeit currency?" he asked.
Ramesh said to put an end to 0.02 per cent currency notes, the Prime Minister is hurting 80 per cent of the public while noting that Modi knew that black money is not normally in cash.
The Congress leader said as per a report presented to the Finance Ministry, of the methods to store black money, cash is the least favoured.
He said the same report says that the methods to store black money is in real estate, gold, offshore accounts and lastly cash.
Taking a dig at the Finance Minister for talking about cashless economy, he wondered what would happen to the majority population in the country like India where only two crore people have credit cards.
Ramesh said Congress party is not against demonetisation but are against the negative impact on various sectors of economy including real estate.
"The move has given a shock to the current economic situation. The reason of monetisation is only politics, there is no economics in mind," he said.
Asked about the fate of GST Bill, he said, it does not seem to be on the government's agenda and they are not interested in it.
