Dharmendra Pradhan questions Naveen Patnaik's support to demonetisation

BHUBANESHWAR: Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, has questioned Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's demand that district cooperative central banks (DCCBs) be allowed to exchange old currency notes for the new, especially when panchayat elections are due in two months. Patnaik is one of the few opposition leaders to support demonetisation but he has objected to the Reserve Bank of India barring DCCBs from accepting old notes recently, saying it would hit the ongoing kharif procurement.

“They claim that they are procuring paddy through online transactions. So money’s moved from one bank to another bank account [into the farmer’s]. How does the note exchange become a problem then?” Pradhan said, speaking at a party event in Bhubaneshwar today.

“Will they use the people whom they [Biju Janta Dal] have placed in these cooperatives to get money from Bhubaneshwar routed back to them through these districts [cooperative banks]?,” asked Pradhan. He accused BJD of trying to use tribals to manage their own unaccountable money in old currency.


In a letter to the Prime Minister recently, Patnaik had asked for exemption of PAN card verification for tribal people depositing more than Rs 50,000 in scheduled areas. “On the pretext of pan cards in adivasi areas, will they use adivasi people to fill their money [BJD money] into their accounts? If someone has Rs 2.5 lakh in their account why should they have a problem with a PAN card?” Pradhan said.