Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, poked fun at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday by claiming that “the PM needs to be educated” over the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to remove its highest-value currency notes from circulation.
“First they said that by bringing 2000 notes, corruption will stop. Now they are saying that by banning 2000 notes, corruption will end. That’s why we say, PM should be educated. Anyone can say anything to an illiterate PM. He doesn’t understand. The public has to suffer,” Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.
The RBI announced the removal of the 2,000 currency notes from circulation more than six years after their introduction. It was made clear that the money would still be accepted as legal tender, nonetheless. The public has until September 30 to deposit such notes in accounts or exchange them at banks, according to the central bank.
Notably, the introduction of the 2,000 note in November 2016 was primarily aimed at quickly addressing the economy’s need for money following the removal of the legal tender status of the 500 and 1,000 bank notes that were in use at the time.
The maximum amount that can be exchanged for other currency notes at one time is 20,000 rupees (10 notes of 2,000 rupees), despite the fact that the RBI did not put a cap on the amount of 2,000 rupee notes that could be deposited in bank accounts.
Several opposition parties began to criticise PM Modi and his administration as a result of this action.
“Typical of our self-styled Vishwaguru. First Act, Second Think (FAST). 2,000 rupee notes introduced with such fanfare after that singularly disastrous ‘Tughlaqi firman’ of Nov 8 2016 are now being withdrawn,” Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said.
Meanwhile, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that the move “virtually reverses the 2016 demonetisation, grandly announced by Modi as the answer to India’s problems of black money, corruption, terrorist funding, and promoting digital economy”. “Modi made DeMon disaster criminally crippled crores of livelihoods, claimed hundreds of lives, destroying the informal economy and MSMEs that contribute most to employment generation and GDP growth,” he wrote on Twitter.
