Shashi Tharoor along with other party leaders were detained by the Kerala Police for protesting against demonetisation outside the RBI office in Thiruvananthapuram. (Source: ANI)

Senior Congress leader and member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor along with other party leaders were detained by the Kerala Police for protesting against demonetisation outside the RBI office in Thiruvananthapuram today. The Congress in Kerala has been aggressively staging protests against the central government’s note ban move in the country. Tharoor, who is the local MP of the party in Kerala, has said in the past that demonetisation exercise was implemented badly and in an ‘astonishingly incompetent manner.’

However, police released the Congress MP and other leaders after a while. Soon after getting released Tharoor told ANI that he along with other party leaders were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office, but were arrested by Police.

We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office but we were arrested by Police and were later released: Shashi Tharoor,Congress pic.twitter.com/9oakvpZmdq — ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

Tharoor had earlier said that the problem with demonetisation is that Centre did not even get the basic requirements in place before announcing its implementation. He said there was not even enough currency to distribute on November 8.

He added, “Nobody in the world has done this. Secondly, even the lack of planning in something as basic as making the new notes the same size as the old so that they can fit in the ATM is mind boggling. Then you scramble to find 55,000 engineers to recalibrate 2.5 lakh ATMs. This makes the government look amateurish.”

The Congress MP had also criticised the government for frequently changing rules and notifications related to demonetisation. “You announce an intention and then four days later you backtrack. It’s as if they just don’t know what they are doing…. There has been a complete disavowal of responsibility and culpability in these failures, which is also troubling,” said Tharoor.

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Earlier, a Congress leader from Kerala, Ramesh Chennithala had said that the demonetisation move has turned out to be a disaster with Kerala’s economy going for a toss and to come out of it a relief package is required. The opposition leader also said that the entire note ban process was the biggest disaster that independent India has seen so far.