Rahul Gandhi says note ban is ‘robbery’

New Delhi: Continuing his scathing attack on the Prime Minister, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi termed demonetisation an “economic robbery” at a public meeting in Almora in the poll-bound state of Uttarakhand. Accusing the government of letting off people like Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi, Mr Gandhi demanded the government should reveal names of people with Swiss bank accounts in Parliament. Mr Gandhi said “the government should reveal names of people who have kept black money in foreign accounts.”

Mr Gandhi  also added that the poor have been the most affected post-demonetisation, while the real black money hoarders roam free.

After quoting the poet Mirza Ghalib in Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh, this time the Congress vice-president quoted Bashir Badr in the Almora public meeting. Mr Gandhi said “people get broken in building a house, mercy does not come to you before razing colonies.” He also recited a dialogue from the movie Namak Halal to hit out at the PM.

Mr Gandhi has been holding a string of back-to-back rallies and public meetings from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh to Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The high-octane campaign has seen him question the Prime Minister’s integrity when he ask whether Mr Modi, as Gujarat CM, got pay offs from the Sahara and the Birla group. In his rallies, Mr Gandhi has also shown diary entries which were, according to him, seized by the income-tax department.

The Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India also took out a march in New Delhi. They protested against the PM and sought answers from him on the entries in the Sahara and Birla diaries. The plan was to march from the NSUI office to the PMO but they were detained on the way.