Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had said notes ban was a moral victory for his party.
Highlights
- Over 40 days after cash ban, still no solution to lot of problems: Naidu
- Naidu took credit for cash ban idea earlier, after move was announced
- Naidu appointed to head committee for transition to cashless economy
BJP ally and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, an early supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ban on 500- and 1,000-rupee notes to unearth black or undeclared money, now says he is worried that there is no end in sight to the crisis brought about by the massive cash crunch that has followed.
"Demonetisation was not our wish but it happened. More than 40 days after demonetisation, despite our best efforts, there are still a lot of problems and there appears to be no solution yet,'' Mr Naidu told legislators and parliamentarians of his Telugu Desam Party in Vijayawada on Monday at a party function.
"Have seen big crises like Cyclone Hudhud and we resolved them, but demonetisation we are not able to since it is not fully in our control," he added.
When PM Modi announced the notes ban on November 8, the Andhra Pardesh Chief Minister had taken credit for the idea, saying that he was the one who had repeatedly petitioned the Prime Minister to ban high denomination currency to weed out corruption.
Mr Naidu - was recently appointed to head a committee of Chief Ministers to script a roadmap for the transition to a cashless economy - had tweeted then that the notes ban was a moral victory for the TDP.
On Monday, however, Mr Naidu said people were struggling to access new currency to buy basic necessities but were unable to with banks and ATMs still running out of cash every day. "I am spending two hours daily to ease the problems caused by demonetisation. I am breaking my head daily but we are unable to find a solution to this problem," he said.
He compared the cash crisis to the state's political crisis of August 1984, when there was an internal party coup against then Chief Minister NT Rama Rao, Mr Naidu's father-in-law. "Even that crisis was tackled within 30 days, whereas in this case even 40 days later, the problems continue," he said.
Many Telugu Desam Party leaders have told NDTV that they believe the Prime Minister's move can have disastrous political consequences because of the hardships that people have suffered.
Opposition parties have united in Parliament and outside to accuse the government of faulty implementation of demonetisation, which they allege has punished the poor rather than the corrupt.
But the BJP says its significant gains and victories in recent civic and by-elections in several states shows that people support the tough measures against corruption and understand that the hardships will be short term, but the gains to the economy and for the poor will be long term and immense.