Baseless claims have marred the first anniversary of demonetization: GettyA year after demonetization, the union government and the BJP apparatus are working overtime to defend the drastic decision to scrap high denomination currency notes overnight.
Amid claims of a cashless and transparent economy and details of the black money hunt, union finance minister Arun Jaitley tried to squeeze in a strange theory: many of the stone-pelters in Kashmir have gone home due to demonetization!
In fact, the minister was merely echoing a BJP propaganda but his tweet was not backed by any data.
If combating terrorism was an aim of demonetization, the government has clearly failed on that front.
Data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal revealed that the number of ordinary people killed by terrorists has gone up this year. So did the number of terrorists killed by security forces.
When ministers like Jaitley and Rajnath Singh claim the stone-pelting incidents have become rarer, the news reports point the other way.
Global media spotlight turned to the insurgence in the Valley in April when an army officer tied up a Kashmiri youth to his jeep as a human shield from agitated people.
In March, soldiers gunned down three people when they fired at a stone-pelting crowd. People fought the security forces in the streets as late as September.
Even the state police debunk the theory that demonetization has blocked the fund flow to the terror groups.
Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti told the legislative assembly that the government had no proof to claim that demonetization has affected the agitation in the Valley.
No incident of using black money to fuel the unrest in the Valley has been reported, she said.
If fund flows have trickled, there is a different reason for it. Security forces targeted the top-rung leaders of the outfits this year.
The eliminated self-proclaimed “commanders” were also the channels for fund distribution, Shopian police superintendent A S Dinkar told ‘First Post’.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal data points to the increased militarization of the Valley.
As many as 182 insurgents have been gunned down by the security forces, up from 113 in 2015 and 165 in 2016.
As many as 54 people have died in terror attacks so far this year, a spike from 20 in 2015 and 14 in 2016.
As many as 70 security personnel died in terror attacks, compared to 41 in 2015 and 88 in 2016.
Jaitley is criticized for glossing over the role of the military in checking stone-pelting and claiming the credit for a knee-jerk government policy.
How does he explain the rising civilian death toll though?
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