Did People Die Due to Demonetisation? Modi Govt Toils to Answer RTI Pleas

New Delhi: Images of hassled crowd queuing up before banks and ATMs might still be the first thing to come to mind about demonetisation drive, but it seems the Narendra Modi government has not bothered to find out if the excruciating exercise of depositing old notes and withdrawing the new currency claimed any life.

RTI applications filed with all the ministries and departments concerned have gone in circles before reaching a dead-end, while not a single reply came forth regarding deaths due to demonetisation.

Responses received by CNN-News18 disclose that no ministry or department has launched any inquiry to determine veracity of media reports, which claimed that more than 80 people died due to demonetisation — some waiting in long bank queues and a few others due to distress and cardiac arrests.

Even though the media reports did carry names and circumstances in which the deaths occurred, no probe was instituted by the government to independently verify the reasons of such deaths and to provide succour to the mourning families by way of financial aid, etc.

The journey of RTI applications further exhibit an intriguing tale. These applications had sought to know whether any inquiry or investigation was carried out to ascertain number of people, who died while exchanging notes in banks or standing in queues in bank ATMs between November 8 and December 30, or till date. Other questions pertained to members of such investigation teams, number of people whose deaths could be directly attributed to hardships post demonetisation and compensation to be paid to such victims.

On December 26, the first RTI application was filed with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The MHA takes stock of law and order situation and also maintains statistics regarding unnatural deaths.

On December 30, 2016, the MHA simply transferred the RTI request to the Department of Revenue without answering any query regarding the investigation. Then, the Department of Revenue, on January 5, transferred the RTI application to the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, where a separate RTI application was already pending in this regard. The Department of Economic Affairs was the nodal department to issue all notifications concerning demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.

After sitting over the RTI application for more than a month, the Department of Economic Affairs transferred the application to the MHA yet again on February 17. “Further details will be available on viewing the status of the above-mentioned new request registration number,” stated the reply.

On the same day, the MHA again transferred the RTI application to the Department of Financial Services with a new registration number.

On February 20, three days later, the Department of Financial Services sent the application to the Department of Economic Affairs one more time. It also sent another copy to the RBI.

The RBI, on March 8, informed that it has “no information to furnish in this regard” whereas the Department of Economic Affairs sat on the RTI plea for the next two months.

On April 24, the Department of Economic Affairs, for the third time, sent the application to the MHA, which had already clarified it had no information.

The MHA, by this time, had also transferred the same RTI application to two different authorities in December 2016 and February 2017, without furnishing any response. After getting the RTI application on April 24, the MHA has not given any reply so far.

The announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 last year had sent the entire nation into a frenzy with people left to struggle to get their hands on valid currency.

But the BJP-led government, apparently, is shying away from even undertaking an exercise to determine whether some people really lost their lives owing to the adversity triggered by demonetisation. The government is still to come out with empirical data on the policy’s benefits to the Indian economy. It would just be in fairness of things to also pay heeds to demonetisation’s social upshots and its impacts on something as precious as human life.