Demonetisation: Jaitley slams political parties for 'irresponsible' statements

New Delhi: Dismissing the criticism over the government's move to scrap Rs. 500 and 1,000 currency notes, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday dubbed the political statements being made about demonetisation as 'irresponsible'.

Defending the Centre's move, Jaitley said people will face difficulty for the first few days but it is a massive operation to curb black money.

"There have been many political statements and some have been very irresponsible. Some people have a special problem to this effort of cleansing," he said addressing a press conference.

Dubbing the demonetisation move as another "jumla" (gimmick) for political reasons, Congress earlier in the day demanded that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) make public all its expenses in upcoming polls in UP, Punjab and other states if it was serious about eliminating black money and corruption.

Questioning the Centre on demonetisation issue, Congress party leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal asked why common persons like him had to stand in line when the bank account and the money was his.

Stating that the decision was not well thought out one and made in haste, Sibal said,"My question is...account is mine, money is mine then why should I stand in a line."

Reacting to this, the Finance Minister said, "The Congress Party today asked why they should stand in line for their own money. The country has the right to know if tax was paid on them or not. We have the right to ensure that the money has come from legal means or not."

"Another irresponsible statement was that since deposits went up between July - September, some people were alerted of this earlier. I have seen all the data, it is apparent that it was because of the arrears of the pay commission. And based on that, they spun a conspiracy theory," he added.