Note ban was largest ever money-laundering scheme by Modi government: Shourie

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Former Union Minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Arun Shourie, on Tuesday once again launched a tirade against Narendra Modi while slamming him for his demonetisation announcement.

Dubbing the note ban move as “idiotic jolt” Shourie said that “everyone who had black converted it into white” adding that demonetisation was the largest ‘money-laundering scheme.’

He told NDTV, “It’s been the largest ever anywhere, a money-laundering scheme, entirely conceived by the government, entirely implemented by the government, entirely acclaimed by the government… Because everybody who had black money has converted it into white through the banks by the government.”

Shourie also slammed the government on the latest GDP figure, which showed that the economy had slowed down to its three years low at 5.74%. He said that the actual growth was much lower since the current Modi government had changed the base on which the economy was to be measured at.

Shourie’s criticism comes just days after veteran BJP leader and his former cabinet colleague, Yashwant Sinha, slammed Modi government for landing the economy into an utter mess.

Writing in the The Indian Express, Sinha, who held the finance portfolio in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, had said that he will be failing in his ‘national duty’ if he did not ‘speak up’ now against the ‘mess the finance minister has made of economy.’

He wrote, “The Prime Minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working over time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters.”

Sinha began to his peace by singling our Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for his criticism by mocking his appointment into the Modi government as an important minister despite losing Lok Sabha elections from Amritsar in 2014.

He wrote, “Arun Jaitley is considered to be the best and the brightest in this government. It was a foregone conclusion before the 2014 elections that he would be the finance minister in the new government. His losing his Lok Sabha election from Amritsar was not allowed to come in the way of this appointment. One may recall that in similar circumstances Atal Bihari Vajpayee had refused to appoint Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan, two of his closest colleagues in the party, to his cabinet in 1998.”

Sinha’s commentary was followed by sharp criticism from former finance minister, P Chidambaram, who asked if the Modi government will finally concede that the economy was sinking.

 

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