Congress Protests Against 500-1000-Note Ban

Thousands of Congress workers on Monday took to the streets across Telangana expressing their disdain at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "unplanned" announcement of the demonetization of 500 and 1,000 currency notes.

Accompanied by hundreds of Party workers and senior leaders, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy led the protest in Hyderabad.

Reddy began the protest march after paying floral tributes to the statue of the first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the latter's birth anniversary at Abids. However the protest march was foiled by the police who took him and other leaders into custody, and shifted them to the Gandhi Nagar PS, after which they continued the protest in the police station.

Similar protests were held at the headquarters of the rest 30 districts in Telangana where Congress workers burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in effigies. They raised slogans which sounded similar to "modi hatao, desh bachao" (oust modi, save the country).

Speaking to the media after his release, Reddy accused the Prime Minister of enforcing financial emergency in the nation by implementing such a decision.

He said that the demonetization of high-value notes brought only misery to common people including the destitute, the middle-class, homemakers and farmers. He said that crores of people across the nation were suffering since the midnight of November 8, and that the decision pushed the country into chaos.

"Congress is not against the demonetization itself, but only against the modus operandi the Centre has adopted," he said.

Reddy drew comparisons between the current state of affairs during the demonetization and the Emergency during 1975, and lamented that common people were being forced to stand in long queues at all banks and ATMs to withdraw their own hard-earned money.

Listing out other alleged difficulties being faced by citizens he claimed that the shortage of cash led to several marriages in the city being cancelled and several people dying at hospitals as they could not pay for treatment.

"Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 500 notes have been demonetized without emplacing a hassle-free system to exchange them with new currency. The newly introduced Rs. 2,000 bills are difficult to utilize as vendors would not give hard cash for the same. The present situation clearly reflects lack of proper planning," he said.

Speaking on proposed mobile ATMs to tackle the ruckus, the TPCC President said that repairing existing ATMs and their softwares was a better solution than bringing in mobile ATMs which would take several days to several months to roll out. Several ATMs across the nation have crashed, and this was admitted by the finance ministry itself. In such a scenario, he said, mobile ATMs were a distant dream. He demanded that the Centre take immediate measures to repair ATMs and bring in a system to end the discomfort brought to the common man.

Senior leaders including former minister Danam Nagendra, former MP M Anjan Kumar Yadav, former MLA Sudhir Reddy, TPCC treasurer Gudur Narayan Reddy and others were also present.