Oppn parties attack govt over note ban move, Arun Jaitley calls it fake

New Delhi: The opposition parties on Tuesday fired a fresh salvo at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party over demonetisation.

At a press conference organised by Congress to bring out another expose, the opposition parties played a videotape purportedly showed an alleged BJP worker in Ahmedabad exchanging the banned notes with the new demonetisation in lieu of a sum.

While addressing the press conference, former Law Minister and senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said that the tape exposed the alleged involvement of the BJP in demonetisation and that it was done to benefit the saffron party. He also accused the Modi-led BJP government at the Centre of swindling public money by terming it 'treason'.

The former Law Minister also accused the government of misusing government machinery, including police and banks to work in the benefit of BJP. Sibal also took a dig at PM Modi for adding 'chowkidar' as a prefix to his name, saying that some chowkidars turned out to be 'traitors'. "After watching this video clip, the country has to decide who is an anti-national?" the Congress leader said.

The purported tape cited by Kapil Sibal at the press conference was hosted by a website tnn.world. A reverse lookup of the domain using online tools like 'Go Daddy' and 'Whois', which reveal owners of websites, showed that the website mentioned by Sibal was registered in the United Kingdom.

"Our industries have suffered heavy losses. Our country has to backtrack on the economic path and crores of Indian youth had to lose jobs due to demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, 2016,' senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

The leaders of the opposition parties who were present at the meet included Sharad Yadav, Hemant Soren, Manoj Jha, Ahmad Patel and Mallikarjun Kharge.

Attacking the Congress, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley alleged that the sting operation which they broadcasted was 'fake'. In a series of tweets, Jaitley accused the grand old party of resorting to 'fakery' ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, given they don't have any real issue to criticise the present government.