Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI Photo) Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI Photo)

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reiterated that demonetisation has drastically reduced insurgent and terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir, where stone throwers were no longer active in the last 8-10 months. “You are having terrorist incidents (now), but the fact that you were finding 5,000-10,000 stone throwers being provided with money by the terrorist organisations, why is it that in the last 8-10 months it has not happened?” he asked.

Jaitley was addressing the Berkley India Conference on Saturday, via video conferencing, when he gave the statement. The minister is set to visit the US to attend an annual meeting of IMF and World Bank in Washington DC and to interact with the corporate world.

The Union minister was defending the government’s initiatives like demonetisation, GST and ‘Swachh Bharat’ which has been widely panned by the critics for not resulting in any changes on the ground.

In November last year, the Prime Minister had announced the scrapping of higher denomination notes of Rs 1000 and Rs 500. One of the reasons given by the Central government was that the counterfeit notes from across the border was creating unrest in the state of J-K and that this move was aimed at stopping their funds.

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