The leaders and ranks of cadre parties like the BJP and the CPM are duty-bound to uphold and justify the decisions taken at the helm. And, the leaders seldom deter from using copious amounts of imagination to get the desired results. More often than not, the far-fetched justifications tread the brink of stupidity and packs a lot of hilarity. Here is a list of goof-ups the BJP came up to justify the demonetization drive.
Flesh trade down: Ravishankar Prasad
Union minister for law Ravishankar Prasad was at his articulate best when he found that the world's oldest profession had taken a hit after DeMon. “Flesh trade has nose-dived in India,” the law minister said on Wednesday.
“Trafficking of women and girls has gone down considerably. A huge amount of cash used to flow to Nepal and Bangladesh... Notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 were used to make payments in the flesh trade, which has now come down,” he told PTI.
In response Congress leader Manish Tiwari sought to know which government department tracked prostitution in the country.
Stone-throwing down in J&K
Union finance minster Arun Jaitley propounded this one. He said incidents of stone-throwing in the state was down as the extremist organizations suddenly found no cash to fund their foot-soldiers.
But, there was no statistics to substantiate this claim. However, the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) said 54 civilians died in terrorist violence in J&K in 2017. This was higher than the figures of 2016 (14) and 2015 (20).
Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, concurring with her cabinet colleagues, said the extremists faced a serious 'cash crunch' and bank robberies were on the rise in J&K. She said left wing terror had also been choked.
Watershed, plunder et al
Jaitley also termed the DeMon decision a 'watershed' moment in the 'history of Indian economy.' But former prime minister Manmohan Singh reiterated that DeMon was 'organized loot and legalized plunder.'
The troll capital of India, Kerala, soon unleashed trolls and memes.
The one that was most-read has Manmohan and Modi on the frame. Manmohan tells Modi (in Malayalam) that 'there is a difference when a doctor and a para-medic performs the same surgery,' in reference to the former's finance and economics background and the latter's lack of it.
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