Cash in circulation rose since note ban: Kapil Sibal

Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Friday said that contrary to claims that demonetization had helped make a cashless economy, the cash in circulation has increased since the 'ill-founded' move was implemented.

Sibal said that the cash in circulation had, in fact, gone up from Rs 17.97 trillion on November 4, 2016 to Rs 21.41 trillion on March 15, 2019. He said that contrary to claims that it was a war on black money, demonetization was a move by the Modi government to help those with black money. "The only cashlessness that happened was for the common man who was left with no cash in hand while those who had black money managed to get it converted even after the deadline for Rs 500 and Rs 1000 old currency notes as acceptable legal currency ended," said Sibal.

Calling it the biggest scam in the history of the country, Sibal said,"This is the biggest scam in the history of the country. There can be some bankers, officials etc behind this." He also said that opposition was getting stronger while Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is going down. "I can see the graph of Modi is going down whereas the opposition's graph is going up including Congress and others. Response for the second phase is worrisome for BJP," Sibal said talking to reporters here. Sibal also played a video sourced from tnn.world which showed a person allegedly associated with BJP converting old currency notes worth Rs 5 crore for new currency notes worth Rs 3 crore.