Congress depressed over PM’s rising popularity: Venkaiah Naidu

Gandhinagar: Hitting back at the Congress over its criticism of demonetisation, Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said the entire process was undertaken in a transparent manner and the Congress is “depressed” over the growing popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Stating that the Congress did not have the “guts” to implement demonetisation during its tenure, he said the Opposition just wants to make “false allegation” and is not ready for a discussion on the issue in Parliament.

“Demonetisation has been well received by the people, poor people, middle class, honest tax payers. All are happy about the same, now the money has reached the banks. How much money is black, how much is white will be known after scrutiny,” he told reporters at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit here.

“The Congress and ot-her parties are depressed over the growing popularity of the Prime Minister because everywhere all surveys indicate 70-80 per cent of the people are hailing the decision of the Prime Minister. Why they are becoming jittery and making such absurd allegations,” he said.

The Congress, he said, is now going to people to voice their protest over demonetisation, but people have voted them out in Gujarat panchayat election, Gujarat municipal elections, in Chandigarh municipal elections, in Faridabad municipal elections and in Maharashtra.

“In the MP byelection and Assam byelection and also various byelections across the country, everywhere it is the BJP,” Mr Naidu said.

BJP’s winning spree is continuing. Even in the panchayat elections in Gujarat, it was almost a sweep. Keeping that in mind, they are becoming jittery... What can we do. All these people, why they are objecting to demonetisation, they had no guts to do it during their regime and now they are unnecessarily making false allegations and no one is going to take them seriously,” Mr Naidu said.

There is no parallel of the demonetisation decision in the world, he said, adding that while there may be “some temporary difficulty and slowdown”, catch up will happen soon.

Keeping up the heat on the note ban issue, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a fresh attack on Mr Modi for the demonetisation move, saying for the first time India’s Prime Minister is being “ridiculed” for the decision.

With regard to advancing Budget date to February 1, he said “the solution has to be given by the court”.