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2 Years Of Demonetisation: Youth Congress Members Protest Outside RBI Headquarters In Delhi

"Around 70-80 Congress protesters, including Ashok Gehlot, Anand Sharma and Bhupinder Singh Hooda have been detained," police said.

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2 Years Of Demonetisation: Youth Congress Members Protest Outside RBI Headquarters In Delhi
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Youth Congress members accompanied by senior party leaders Friday staged a protest against demonetisation outside the RBI office here and were detained by police.

The security forces forcibly took the protestors to police station in a bus.

"Around 70-80 Congress protesters, including Ashok Gehlot, Anand Sharma and Bhupinder Singh Hooda have been detained," police said.

The protesters wore masks and shouted slogans against the BJP-led government.

Amrish Ranjan Pandey, national spokesperson of the Youth Congress, said the protest was aimed at "highlighting the miseries of the nation since the last two years under the Modi regime".

"It is a protest against the 'failed' demonetisation of the Modi government wherein common people suffered its grave consequences," he said.

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On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denomination bank notes would cease to exist as legal tenders.

The withdrawal of the notes had led to a liquidity crunch and people stood in serpentine queues outside banks and ATMs to exchange old notes.

Alleging that the demonetisation was a "big money laundering scheme", Anand Sharma on Thursday announced that the Congress party will hold a nationwide protest on Friday to mark the second anniversary of demonetisation.

The opposition parties have criticised the exercise as "ill-advised" and "disastrous" for the country, but the government has maintained that the move helped increase the tax base and allowed greater formalisation of the economy.

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The Congress launched a multi-pronged attack on the Modi government over demonetisation, with former prime minister Manmohan Singh saying the "scars and wounds" it caused are getting more visible with time and party chief Rahul Gandhi describing the measure as a carefully planned "criminal financial scam".

In a scathing assessment of the demonetisation exercise, Singh said the decision's second anniversary Thursday is a day to remember how "economic misadventures" can roil the nation.

In a statement, he asked the government not to resort to further unorthodox, short-term economic measures that can cause any more uncertainty in the economy.

Gandhi also came out with a statement sharply criticising demonetisation and describing it as a "tragedy" that destroyed millions of lives.

PTI

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