"Everybody is against corruption," this is how Trinamool Congress spokesperson and RS member Derek O'Brien opened his speech.
With bullet points ready to address the House during the debate over demonetisation in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he questioned, "How will my poor brothers and sisters buy aata and chawal tomorrow?”, something that the Bengal CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee has been reiterating over the last two weeks.
Terming former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention as 'erudite', he questioned the Centre in the same vein, “What have you done to bring black money from abroad?”
“Only 2% people hold black money, then why other 98% people are suffering due to demonetisaton,” asked Derek.
Derek emphasised how this was not an ego-battle and iterated that the Opposition had offered concrete solutions for implementation. Some of them were, usage of old notes until enough currency was dispensed and printing smaller currency notes.
He remarked, “Secrecy cannot be the excuse for putting people in pain.” Questioning Jaitley as to what prevented the centre from printing 100 rupee notes all of the last year,
Derek quipped saying, perhaps the Finance Minister himself wasn't aware of such a move till the last day.
Derek went on to throw numbers about the usage of plastic money in India and specifically emphasized on how 4 out of 5 villagers don't even have a bank account.
He concluded his long address in the Parliament by saying, “ Anyone who opposes your decisions (demonetisation) isn't anti-national or corrupt. Why are you making such statements an issue?”