Chennai: CPI (M) on Wednesday staged the demonstration across the state protesting the Centre’s decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
Party cadres led by its state secretary G. Ramakrishnan staged a road roko near the busy Parry’s Corner, bringing traffic to a halt. Raising slogans against the Centre’s “unplanned demonetisations move”, cadres brought traffic to halt on NSC Bose Road.
When a section of cadres tried to go on a march towards the RBI office on Kamarajar Road to lay siege to it, police prevented them. Angry cadres jumped over the barricades and sat at Parry’s corner signal halting the traffic.
Mr Ramakrishnan said the poor and the middle classes have been largely affected by the demonetisations move. He said that without taking any steps against those who stashed black money in foreign countries and corporate companies who had wilfully defaulted loans taken from the nationalised banks, the Centre has demonetised currencies without proper plan causing hardship to the public.
He demanded the Centre to allow exchange of the scrapped notes through cooperative banks for the benefit of rural people. He also wanted the Centre to allow usage of such notes until new currencies were made available.
