Demonetisation has been a success as it meet its objectives says Arun Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday Denied that demonetisation failed to achieve its objective and defends RBI's report.

The RBI in its reports revealed that Rs 15.44 lakh crore of notes taken out of circulation by the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes last November, Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99% notes have returned to the banking system.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that confiscation of money wasn’t the objective of the Centre’s demonetisation exercise and  also attacked opposition in his speech by saying that those who never acted against black money while in power were trying to create a confusion that the success of note-ban hinges on the amount of money that stays out of the system.

The objective of demonetisation was that India is a high-cash economy and that scenario needs to be altered," Jaitley told reporters after the release of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) annual report for the last fiscal giving the figures, for the first time, of demonetised notes returned to the system.

 He also added that the other objectives of demonetisation were to combat black money and expand the tax base. Post demonetisation, tariff tax base has increased substantially. Personal IT returns have increased by 25 per cent.