New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi Wednesday alleged that Sahara paid Rs 40 crore to Narendra Modi before he became prime minister. He claimed that when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he received multiple payments spread across 2013-14 from the company. Rahul claimed that when the Income-Tax department raided Sahara’s premises in 2014, they recovered documents showing that payments have been made to Modi between the months of October 2013 and February 2014.

“As per record with IT, Rs 2.5 cr was given to PM Modi on 30 Oct ’13; Rs 5 cr on 12 Nov ’13; Rs 2.5 cr on 27 Nov ’13; Rs 5cr on 29 Nov ’13. Entries showed Rs 5cr given to PM Modi on 6 Dec ’13; Rs 5 cr on 19 Dec ’13; Rs 5cr on 13 Jan ’14; Rs 5 cr on 28 Jan ’14; Rs 5 cr 22 Feb ’14,” Gandhi said.

Modi became prime minister in May 2014, after the National Democratic Alliance swept the Lok Sabha polls. During the Parliament Winter Session, Rahul claimed that he had evidence linking PM Modi directly with corruption. He also claimed that if he was allowed to speak in the Parliament it would cause an “earthquake” in the country. The Bharatiya Janata Party immediately rubbished the allegations, saying that Rahul is a “non-serious political leader”. “It become their (Cong) habit to level baseless allegations against PM. Rahul Gandhi is a part time non-serious political leader,” said BJP.

Addressing a rally in Mehsana, he continued his tirade against PM Modi over demonetisation. Rahul Gandhi said the government’s step is not against corruption or black money, but it was against the honest poor people. Gandhi said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demonetisation is not a surgical strike on black money, but against poor and honest people of the this country.” Talking about the difficulties faced by the farmers after demonetisation, Gandhi said, “A farmer does not purchase his seeds by cheque or card but in cash, you (PM Modi) have taken away that cash from them.”

He also said that the Congress would have supported the government if it had taken any step to eradicate corruption. “If Narendra Modi ji’s government take any big or small step to eradicate corruption, Congress party will support them,” said Gandhi. He also said that the prime minister had made fun of labourers in Parliament.

He also accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh of snatching the land of tribals. “The BJP ruled government in MP, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh is snatching the land of tribals. And when somebody stand for his right, they are being shot,” said Gandhi. “You kill Dalit here in Gujarat, they live in fear,” Gandhi added.

Hitting out at the government over scrapping of high value notes, Gandhi reiterated that all cash is not black money and all black money is not in cash. Referring to the writing off of Vijay Mallya’s loan by the government, Gandhi said, “Modi ji cannot bring back money taken as loans by 1% rich people and hence he is using money of poor to waive of this bad debt. When Switzerland government has given you the list of names of people having black money deposited in Swiss bank, why are you not disclosing their name in Parliament.”

(IANS)

Mumbai: Under all-round attack, the Reserve Bank today did a U-turn on customers depositing demonetised notes over Rs 5,000 till December 30 by making it clear that there will be no questions asked either in case of one-time or repeat deposits if the accounts are KYC-compliant.

Such customers will also not be questioned by bank officials on why they had failed to deposit the old notes earlier.

The RBI turnaround came as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s assurance on Monday night and yesterday that there will be no questions asked to customers who would make one-time deposit above Rs 5,000 failed to persuade bank officials who insisted that there should be fresh circular from RBI so that customers will not be harassed.

However, customers with non-KYC accounts will be subject to stiff conditions imposed by RBI on December 19 for deposit of junked notes.

The decision follows widespread criticism of the guidelines, with people saying the Prime Minister as well as the finance minister have asked people not to throng the banks as they have time till December 30 to deposit invalid notes in their accounts.

On review of the guidelines, RBI decided to modify the old currency deposit rules for fully-KYC compliant customers, an RBI notification said today.

The December 19 notification of RBI had said tenders of old currency in excess of Rs 5,000 into a bank account will be received for credit only once during the remaining period till December 30, 2016.

“The credit in such cases shall be afforded only after questioning tenderer, on record, in presence of at least two officials of the bank, as to why this could not be deposited earlier and receiving a satisfactory explanation. The explanation should be kept on record to facilitate an audit trail at a later stage,” it had said.

Replying to queries on curbs on deposit of old currency notes by RBI, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley yesterday had said people should go and deposit the now-defunct notes at one go as repeat deposits raise doubt.

“Today, there are no exemptions… Now, there is no further scope of earning old currency. So, those who have got old currency must go and deposit at one go,” he had said.

“Therefore, if somebody goes everyday and deposit old currency, it raises suspicion. How is he getting everyday? As long as exemptions existed, there was scope for getting old currency. But once the exemptions have been lifted, if you have old currency, go and deposit at one go.”

(Agencies)

New Delhi: Several new and large discrepancies have emerged in the stated positions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government on the printing and distribution of new currencies following the demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes on November 8.

These discrepancies include a highly unlikely surge in the supply of high-denomination notes in two days. They also show substantial divergence in figures given by the central banker and those given by the government in Parliament. And finally there’s an unexplained hiatus in the supply of notes for 11 days.

Either Parliament has been misled, or claims about the supply by the RBI are flawed.

Let’s look at the figures in chronological order:

On November 28, the RBI issued a press release saying that the public had withdrawn Rs 2.16 lakh crore in new notes from accounts or ATMs till November 27. As RBI chose not to give any break-up of this amount, it is fair to assume that some of this was in lower denomination notes of Rs 100 or less.

However, according to a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister of State for Finance, Arjun Ram Meghwal, categorically stated that, by November 29, a total of 1,608 million pieces (160.8 crore) of Rs 2,000 denomination and 156 million (15.6 crore) pieces of Rs 500 had been supplied — a total of 1,764 million pieces (or 1.76 billion) amounting to a little over Rs 3.29 lakh crore. The minister’s reply came on December 6.

There are two significant points to note here:

One, that the government’s number implies that the currency disbursal had shot up by over Rs 1.13 lakh crore in just two days. This, when the RBI had supplied Rs 2.16 lakh crore in 17 days till then — at an average of only Rs 12,700 crore a day.

Moreover, Meghwal’s number pertained only to high denomination notes, whereas the RBI number was a mix of all denominations. In other words, the discrepancy between the two sets of numbers would have been even higher if the minister’s reply in Parliament had included the smaller denomination currency notes disbursed till November 29.

Now things begin to get even more curiouser.

On the day the monetary policy was announced (December 7), the RBI revealed a new set of disbursal figures. The Deputy Governor of RBI, R. Gandhi, said a total of Rs 4 lakh crore had been disbursed as of the previous day.

Of this amount, Rs 1.06 lakh crore was in smaller denomination currency notes, according to Gandhi, while the rest — Rs 2.94 lakh crore — implicitly, was by way of high-denomination notes.

This figure of Rs 2.94 lakh crore, which was announced seven days after the date of disbursal given in Parliament reply, is substantially less than the amount of Rs 3.29 lakh crore mentioned in the minister’s written statement about supply till November 29.

Yet again, on December 12, Gandhi, while speaking to reporters, said that a total of 1.7 billion notes of higher denomination of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 had been issued to the public till December 10.

That means, a full 11 days after Meghwal’s reply that 1.76 billion high-value notes had been disbursed by November 29, the RBI was stating that the notes given out had been less or at best the same — if one assumes that he was giving a rounded-off figure of 1.7 billion.

(IANS)