New Delhi: The Congress on Friday called for a thorough investigation into post-demonetisation deposits following revelations that a cooperative bank associated with BJP chief Amit Shah received Rs 745 crore in scrapped notes before these banks were barred from accepting them.
Replies by the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Nabard) to queries filed under the Right to Information Act reveal that many other cooperative banks linked to senior BJP leaders had also received high deposits.
Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala declared on Friday that Rahul Gandhi's contention - that the November 8, 2016, demonetisation drive was independent India's biggest scam - had been vindicated.
Rahul, too, lost no time in taking a dig at the BJP chief. "Congratulations Amit Shah ji, Director, Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, on your bank winning 1st prize in the conversion of old notes to new race. Rs 750 crore in 5 days! Millions of Indians whose lives were destroyed by demonetization, salute your achievement," the Congress chief tweeted in the morning.
The Congress released the list of banks linked to BJP leaders that got the deposits, according to the May 7 RTI reply to queries filed by Manoranjan S. Roy, a Mumbai-based information activist.
The Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, whose directors include Shah and his close associates, had received Rs 745.58 crore in scrapped notes - the highest among all 370 district cooperative banks in the country - in the first five days after conversions began on November 10, 2016.
District cooperative banks were banned from accepting the scrapped notes after November 14 on the ground that black money would be laundered through this route.
Shah had been the bank's chairman earlier, and his party colleague and aide Ajay Patel now heads it. Another close associate Yashpal Chudasma, whose name had appeared in the controversy related to his son Jay Shah, is another director.
No other bank among the 370 district co-operative banks across the country had received such a big sum in five days.
"Whose money was this?" Surjewala asked. "We had asked the government to bring out a list of all those who deposited more than Rs 25 lakh just before demonetisation or soon after that. Why was that not done?"
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