Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi visited several ATMs in the national capital this morning where he interacted with people standing in long queues to withdraw new currency.
Before heading to Parliament, Gandhi visited ATMs in several areas including Anand Parbat, Zakhira, Inderlok and Jahangirpuri where he enquired from people about the difficulties being faced by them following the Centre's decision to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.
However, this was not Gandhi's first visit to an ATM after the big announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8.
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He had landed up at Parliament Street branch of State Bank of India here on November 11 and stood in the queue with the people there to exchange demonetised currency notes with new ones.
Last week as well he had made an unscheduled brief stop at an ATM in suburban Vakola in Mumbai and interacted with the people standing in a queue.
Gandhi who has been critical of the demonetisation move had launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister saying he was "laughing" while people were dying in queues outside banks and ATMs to withdraw money and the move will turn out to be a "big scam".
He had also claimed that many economists including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had found the decision to withdraw the high-value tenders to be without rationale and the government did not seem to be going after the "big players" in black money like Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi.
The Congress leader alleged the banknotes are
"deliberately" not distributed among the masses.
"Banks may not be successful in keeping that money with themselves if people were allowed to withdraw money without the cap of Rs 24,000 per week. Banks would not have succeeded if people would be able to withdraw 2,000 rupee notes from ATM or enough number of new notes were printed in time," claimed Rahul.
He further alleged that Modi had suddenly shifted the focus from black money to cashless economy on realising he had "failed" in getting hold of black money through the move.
The Congress scion also mocked Modi's push for cashless transactions, saying the PM was indeed successful in making India "cashless".
"Modiji has indeed made India cashless by destroying currency notes of 90 per cent population. In Modiji's cashless economy, 5 per cent commission deducted on each transaction goes to those one per cent rich people. Thus, poor citizens' money is once again going into the pockets of rich," Rahul said.
He also demanded the government bring back Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi, who are wanted in India for financial wrongdoings.
