NEW DELHI: Even while the BJP MPs hailing from Uttar Pradesh claimed the momentum in favour of the saffron outfit sliding ahead of the elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the “nation is above party interests”. In an address to the Parliamentary party meeting of the BJP on the last day of the Winter session of Parliament, the Prime Minister stated that the Wanchoo Committee in 1971 had recommended demonetisation, but the then government headed by the Congress did not implement the suggestions fearing electoral losses.
Citing a book, Modi told the BJP MPs that when the then Finance Minister Y B Chavan went to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and supported the recommendations on demonetization, she had asked if the Congress did not have to fight elections. "Only one question. Are no elections to be fought by the Congress party?" Modi quoted Gandhi having asked Chavan.
With this pretext, the Prime Minister asked the BJP MPs: "Tell me, if the party is bigger or the country.” The Prime Minister then accused the Congress of having put its interests before the country's even while the BJP puts the country's interests before the party's.
Modi also used the opportunity to hit back at the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who had attacked the decision on demonetization in his speech in the Rajya Sabha and an article and had claimed the move was “organised plunder and legalised loot".
The Prime Minister, while quoting Singh’s comments made in 1991, said that he once used "language of threat" against tax evaders but his voice has completely changed now. "Why? Because he is worried about his party not country," said the Prime Minister.
Afterwards, the Prime Minister launched scathing attacks on the Opposition for disrupting the Winter session of the Parliament. He stated that the Opposition in the past used to disrupt the proceedings of the House on account of reports of scams. “But the Congress-led parties are now doing so against government's steps to curb black money and corruption. The Left parties have compromised with their ideology even as their mentors and communist leaders Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet had supported the idea of demonetisation,” Modi said.
The Prime Minister also claimed that criticism of the decision on demonetization by the Opposition is an evidence of their support for the "dishonest and corrupt". “Political values have fallen so much that Opposition parties are brazenly speaking in favour of the dishonest, something that used to be done earlier secretively,” said the Prime Minister, while exhorting the BJP MPs to fight to rid the country of corruption and black money with confidence. He stressed that digital transactions should be a "way of life".