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Chandigarh: The Haryana and Chandigarh units of the Congress will gherao the regional office of Reserve Bank of India on January 18 in protest against “RBI’s failure to do its constitutional duty at the time of demonetisation”.
“The RBI has failed to do its constitutional duty at the time of demonetisation, due to which people had to suffer a lot. The misery of the people has not ended, but they are still suffering,” Haryana Congress President Ashok Tanwar said addressing a press conference here.
Tanwar said the HPCC had summoned a meeting of party MLAs and MPs from the state here today in view of the decision to gherao the RBI office, which will be part of Congress’ national programme to gherao RBI offices at other places in the country as well on January 18.
The meeting had been summoned by senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP from Himachal Pradesh Viplove Thakur and was attended among others by former Union Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, former Haryana Minister Ajay Singh Yadav and two MLAs of the Haryana Congress.
However, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and most of the legislators were not present at the meeting, but Viplove Thakur said, “I had summoned the meeting at a short notice.
“The MLAs and other leaders who could not attend informed me over phone that they had pre-scheduled engagements.
However, they have assured that all of them will be present here on January 18”.
“I talked to Hooda also, there is no groupism in the party. It is a national programme of the Congress party (on Jan 18) and everyone will participate in the event,” she said to another related question.
Bansal, who is also former MP from Chandigarh, said, “We have decided to gherao the RBI because it has failed to do its constitutional duty and has happily surrendered its autonomy.”
About the demonetisation step, Bansal said, “For the first time such a thing has happened in the country, which is unconstitutional, against the law and against the rules and regulations of the RBI. This decision of the Modi government has been thrust upon the people.”
“According to a conservative estimate, the demonetisation step will hit country’s GDP by atleast 1 per cent, which is nearly Rs 1.5 lakh crore,” Bansal said, adding “also, cashless society is not practical in a big and diverse country like India.”
Slamming the demonetisation decision, Bansal said, “When people deposited the demonetised currency in the banks, the banks imposed cash handling charges.”
When asked why Congress had done poorly in the recently held civic polls in Chandigarh, Bansal did not agree that people of Chandigarh had backed demonetisation decision of the government, saying other factors were at work here.
