mention of the "catastrophic impact" of demonetisation in the President's speech.
mention of the "catastrophic impact" of demonetisation in the President's speech. However, the "deafening silence" on the issue in the address is a matter of grave concern, he said.
"It is said that the design of the new notes was finalised on May 19, 2016. If the design had been finalised, what prevented the government from printing the notes or recalibrating the ATMs. This is a tragedy where over a 100 lives have been lost and no one is sorry. There is no compensation or assurance of employment, because the government doesn't want to acknowledge that people have died standing in queues," he said.
He questioned whether the government was unaware of the distressing unemployment rate while taking up demonetisation.
"Everybody knows black money is not kept in cash," he said adding that the government has made all Indians criminals by forcing them to stand in queues to deposit their savings in cash.
Participating in the debate, Ram Kumar Kashyap (INLD) expressed concern over growing incidence of female foeticides and said this should be brought in the category of "heinous crime" so as to bridge the gender gap.
On suggestion of holding the simultaneous election of Lok Sabha and state assemblies, he supported the idea but said the all parties should be taken into confidence. Simultaneous election would result in saving of money, which could be utilised for eradicating poverty and unemployment.
Kashyap also demanded that farmers loan should be waived to provide relief to them.
TKS Elangovan (DMK) said the President's address has made many "mountains out of molehills". "Opening of bank accounts cannot be called financial inclusion," he said.
The DMK member charged that the government took the demonetisation decision to hide its failure to bring back blackmoney stashed abroad.
Equating note ban as "burning the house to kill bedbugs", he said there was no fruitful result of demonetisation.
On simultaneous election, Elangovan said this is possible in a two party democracy but "we are multi-party democracy".
Citing the example of Lok Sabha elections in 1996, 1998 and 1999 at short intervals, he said: "When Parliament is dissolved, can we dissolve all state assemblies?" Simultaneous polls can only be possible if there is proportional representation, he added. (More)
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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