Pawar slams Modi for dragging Indira into note ban debate

Modi had on Friday trained guns at the former PM Indira Gandhi, claiming that she overlooked a suggestion in 1971 for demonetisation by the then Finance Minister Y B Chavan. Pawar said, “It is not right to say nothing has happened in the country in past 70 years. In the 70 years, Congress has not been in power all the time. Modi himself was chief minister of a state for 13 years.”

“All leaders including Pandit (Jawaharlal) Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh have contributed to the country’s development. How can one say nothing has happened in 70 years and development is taking place only since last two years,” he said.

Pawar said he had supported the decision of demonetisation as it was good for eradication of black money. But, its implementation has been flawed and the central government is responsible for the hardships faced by the common man. “The central government is guilty of not putting in place an alternative system like pumping in enough lower denomination notes after the scrapping of high denomination currency notes,” he said.

He said when people are standing in queues for their own money, several people have been caught with bundles of new currency notes in searches across the country. “From where have people got this amount of cash … it is from the banks which are under the control of central government,” he claimed.