Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah yesterday defended the government’s demonitisation decision, saying the “bold” move has hit terror groups hard, leaving them penniless.
Addressing a rally of BJP leaders here, Shah said opposition parties which used to demand that the government take action against black money, are now opposing the demonetisation move.
“It looks as if they (opposition parties) have lost a lot (after the demonetisation),” Shah said.
“The demonetisation move has given a hard blow to terrorism. The terror organisations have been left penniless,” Shah said.
He said that the country needed a surgery to cure it from the cancer of black money and the Modi government has done that.
Meanwhile in Agra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country will emerge victorious after the demonetisation decision that was a “test by fire”.
“As I said on the very first day when I announced the decision, it is a time-consuming process. It will cause inconvenience and a little hardship but, I believe, the nation will come out victorious from this test by fire,” Modi said at a public rally in the city of the Taj Mahal in Uttar Pradesh.
He said the government has been flexible in implementing the demonetisation decision and made alterations as the need arose.
“I have asked for 50 days. It’s been just 10 days and over Rs5,000 crore (Rs50bn) have already been deposited in banks... the banks will infuse this money in the markets,” Modi added.
After long queues at banks and ATMs for exchanging notes or withdrawing money, Modi had appealed to the public to give him 50 days for the implementation of the demonetisation decision wherein the old Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes were banned from November 8 midnight.
Modi said he did not take the demonetisation decision to trouble anyone but for the good of the coming generations.
Meanwhile in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed unhappiness over the difficulties people continue to face.
He said he never witnessed in his political career a situation where a problem remained unresolved for such a long time.
Naidu, whose Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is a partner in BJP-led government, said it was unfortunate that people continue to face hardships.
Naidu, who had long been demanding demonetisation of Rs1,000 and Rs500 notes and had written Modi last month, said the authorities should make alternate arrangements to provide immediate relief to people.
In New Delhi, industry chamber Assocham said the immediate fallout of the withdrawal of high denomination notes would be a mushrooming growth of non-bank entities like Paytm and Free charge into the payment business.
“More and more retailers in the goods and service value chain would be compelled to shift to non-cash modes for customer transactions,” the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) said.
An Assocham study found that while as many as 45 pre-paid payment instruments (PPI) players working as mobile and digital wallets have started offering services, it is only a handful of operators which have been aggressively ramping up and marketing their operations.
“However, the demonetisation has come about as a big opportunity for them. It is not only during this immediate cash crisis period that the PPIs would see a huge growth, but going forward also, the system would penetrate into the very small ‘kirana’ stores as well,” Assocham secretary general D S Rawat said.
Offering stored value service to the customers, non-bank PPI issuers are allowed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to make transactions for purchase of goods and services besides remitting payments out of the mobile wallets.
“The wallet-to-wallet transactions would also see a big growth. It would not be a surprise if well-run roadside ‘dhabas’ also start accepting bills through mobile wallet players,” Rawat said.