Demonetisation anniversary: Union minister to highlight crackdown on black money

New Delhi, Nov 6: Ministers in the Modi government will fan across the country over the next two days to highlight the crackdown on black money to mark the first anniversary of demonetisation on November 8 which the BJP will observe as 'anti-black money day' and Congress as 'black day'.

Many of them will speak to media tomorrow in major cities, while BJP leaders, including ministers, MPs and MLAs, will hold several events to highlight the Modi dispensation's policies to curb illicit money, party sources said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will interact with journalists in the national capital tomorrow, while Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi will speak in Bhopal and Patna respectively.

On November 8, Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Ananth Kumar, Nirmala Sitharaman, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Suresh Prabhu and Smriti Irani will speak in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Lucknow respectively. Prakash Javadekar will speak to media in Bengaluru and Piyush Goyal in Ahmedabad.

Union minister Jayant Sinha has also been drafted for the exercise, sources said. BJP chief Amit Shah will be in Gujarat that day. With the BJP and the Congress involved in a war of words over demonetisation's implications, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has turned up the heat on the opposition party over the issue of black money and corruption during his election rallies. The Congress too has planned a nation-wide exercise to project demonetisation as a "failure".

PTI