Gandhi family son-in-law and businessman Robert Vadra, through a Facebook post, strongly condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move of demonitisation and its effects. His criticism came on January 9, a day after all the petrol pumps across the country announced that they won’t entertain debit or credit cards for the transaction.
Posting a picture on Facebook related to the news that petrol pumps won’t accept cards anymore, Vadra slammed the centre and termed the note-ban move “unthought and unplanned”. In his post, Vadra wrote,”The Govt seems to have reached its levels of desperation to overcome the initial blunder it created, through the unplanned and unthought process of demonetisation”.
He also hit hard PM Modi’s idea of going cashless and support the digitised transaction. He mentioned that when the people are ready to accept the change, lack of coordination with banks and their policies is forcing petrol pump owners to adopt such steps.
He wrote,”First government offered sops to push people to use Debit/Credit cards, and when people started using more of cashless means, now lack of coordination with banks and their policies is forcing petrol pump owners to adopt these drastic steps.. what was the whole meaning to offer 0.75 % discount and then the banks start charging MDR 1% from petrol pumps ? I don’t see any rational, do you?”
On January 9, in a sudden move, petrol pumps across the country have said that they won’t accept credit or debit cards from midnight as the banks are levying an extra charge on these transactions.
According to the All-India Petroleum Dealers’ Association (AIPDA), this will apply to cards from HDFC, Axis Bank and ICICI.
The All India Petroleum Dealers’ Association has also written to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying “HDFC and other banks” were levying the extra charge and since there has been no word of passing the charge to consumers, the dealers will sustain a loss.
