Kerala: Shashi Tharoor, other Cong leaders detained for note ban protest

Thiruvananthapuram: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and other party men were detained on Friday by the police in Thiruvananthapuram for protesting against demonetisation outside the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) office.

Tharoor, the local MP from Trivandrum, had said earlier that the demonetisation exercise was implemented badly and in an ‘astonishingly incompetent manner.’

“The problem goes to such basic elements of planning such as not having enough currency before you spring this on the nation, when 86 per cent of your currency would become illegal in three-and-a-quarter hours. That’s astonishing. Nobody in the world has done this. Secondly, even the lack of planning in something as basic as making the new notes the same size as the old so that they can fit in the ATM is mind-boggling. Then you scramble to find 55,000 engineers to recalibrate 2.5 lakh ATMs. This makes the government look amateurish,” Tharoor had earlier said at an event in New Delhi.

“We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office, but were arrested by police and later released,” Tharoor said to ANI on his arrest.