Jana’s soft stand irks Congress leaders

​Hyderabad: Congress leaders were put to embarrassment as Opposition leader K Jana Reddy not only adopted a soft stand against the TRS government but also in a way supported demonetisation.

What has irked the state Congress leaders was that while the Congress had strongly been opposing the demonetisation in Parliament, initiating the debate on the demonetisation and the problems being faced by the people in the state, Jana Reddy said the move could be supported if it achieved the goals as claimed by the Prime Minister.

Pointing out the problems faced by the farmers, small business people and daily wage earners, Jana Reddy adopted soft stand and asked the government to pay compensation to those killed while standing in bank and ATM queues after the demonetisation of old currency notes.

Referring to this, the Congress leaders point out that he had failed to go aggressive against the TRS government on the issue.

They said Jana Reddy should have made a forceful presentation of how the government had failed to come to the rescue of the people and how the move had adversely impacted the state economy.

Jana Reddy said when the UPA government mulled demonetisation the BJP had opposed the same at that time.

He said Income Tax Department should have provided an opportunity to the people to disclose unaccounted money. However, the decision to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 was taken in a haste which consequently created a lot of problems for everyone.

He said as against the claims of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of restoring normalcy within 50 days, he said the present chaos would continue for at least six more months.

Jana Reddy said the implementation of cashless or digital economy was not so easy as being projected by the Central and state governments.

He said the people need to be trained in using e-transactions which is not possible in a country with a huge percentage of illiterate persons.