PM Modi defends frequent rule changes during demonetisation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today defended the frequent rule changes during demonetisation saying the government was fighting corrupt people who were finding new ways to hide black money.

The government took a dig at the opposition saying the Congress had made a total 1035 rule changes in the implementation of MNREGA as compared to over a hundred rule changes during demonetisation.

Standing by his decision to ban high value currency notes PM Modi said, "India's economy was doing well at the time of demonetisation, that is why the government took the decision."

The amount of business and trade that happens in the country around Diwali can be compared to the business done in the entire year and after Diwali there is a lull, this was kept in mind before the government took the decision of note-ban, PM said.

On the day our govt was formed, the first thing we did was to make SIT on black money. We signed agreements with tax havens to prevent money laundering, PM said.

Attacking the opposition for disrupting the Parliament after demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his government was ready to discuss demonetisation but the opposition was only interested in giving TV bytes.

"No one can deny that corruption starts with cash, benami property and gold jewellery are all the by-product of it," PM said while emphasizing the need of less-cash economy.

Speaking on advancement of Budget date, PM said India is an agrarian economy where the disbursement of funds allocated in budget starts from May, and from June there is no work due to monsoon, so for three months we were not able to use the budget allocation.

When Rail budget was first presented, the transport sector was different. Now things are different and a more comprehensive look is needed, PM said on rail budget.

90 years ago, Railway was the only way of transportation, now the situation has changed and we have several mode of transportation. We are changing Railway. When we came to power, we analysed that there were 1500 announcements which were buried in papers only.