The Rajya Sabha saw four adjournments within its first hour of proceedings on Tuesday as the Congress, with support from the Trinamool Congress and the Janata Dal (United), created a ruckus over the printing of two kinds of 500 and 2000-rupee notes, calling it the “biggest scam of this century”.
Slogan-shouting Congress members trooped into the well even as Leader of the House and finance minister Arun Jaitley said the opposition party has been raising “frivolous” issues without giving notices to stall Zero Hour proceedings.
JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav, who has been reportedly uneasy since his party aligned with the BJP to form a government in Bihar, sided with the opposition and showed enlarged copies of differently sized 500 rupee notes.
“I can give signed copies” of the notes, he said as treasury benches countered his contention which was earlier raised by Kapil Sibal of the Congress. Yadav said no country in the world has different sized currency notes. “One is big, one is small,” he said.
Other members, including Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien also displayed the new 500 rupee notes issued after demonetisation to show the different sizes. He first offered to submit the notes to Jaitley for scrutiny and then walked up to him to explain to him the difference.
Jaitley said there is no provision in the rules that anyone could “flash any paper and say it is point of order”.
