BJP will have to forfeit its deposit at the upcoming Uttar
Pradesh elections for creating a financial anarchy over demonetisation, said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee while leaving Nabanna this evening. “The move is
sending a wrong message to the common people.

BJP cannot do anything for damage-control. It will see the
results in the Uttar Pradesh elections when the party will have to forfeit its
deposits,” said Banerjee. Referring to former Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi’s defeat, Banerjee said the former had spoken about ‘Garibi (poverty)
Hatao and not Garib (beggar) Hatao’. But the message had not gone down well as
a result of which she lost. Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she
said the person who has pushed the country’s people into such trouble is now
sitting in Japan. The move, she alleged, has left the tea garden workers
without wages. They have written to the state government, she said.

Banerjee has asked state chief secretary Basdudeb Banerjee
to look into the matter. “I will not spare anybody if the workers do not
get their wages,” she said. The demonetisation will be taken up at the
Parliament. An adjournment motion on the subject will be brought in the Lok
Sabha on 16 November, she added. =Banerjee said it was important to punish
the black money hoarders and the corrupt. We have no problem with that but it
is being done at the cost of the common people.

The move is inconveniencing the common people and the poor,
she said.

According to Banerjee, there should have been a prior
planning and proper methodology for implementation of such an extensive move
which directly affects millions, especially the middle class and the poor. Even
the banks do not have adequate manpower as a result of which people are getting
harassed, she added. Earlier on Thursday, in a statement she said: “I enquired from
all sections of society about the present financial chaos.

The move was to bring back black money from outside as per
the electoral assurance. But now the government has made the common people feel
helpless and penniless. Is it right ?” “It is unthinkable as to how people had
to queue up at the banks throughout the day to get their money exchanged,” she
said.