Shekhar had asked what amount of banned ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes had been deposited or exchanged at the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank—which has Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah as its director—in the five days post demonetisation, and if the authorities had launched any probe into the alleged "huge deposits".

The answer to the ‘unstarred question’ by the Finance Ministry confirms the information disclosed by Mumbai-based activist Manoranjan S Roy’s RTI application, stating that that ADCB had collected the highest number of demonetised notes among DCCBs in just five days after the note ban was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016.

“As per the information provided by NABARD, highest amount of demonetised notes was deposited in the Ahmedabad District Co-operative Bank Ltd to the tune of ₹745.5 crore,” the Finance Ministry’s reply read.

Normally replies to the questions are uploaded on the Rajya Sabha website on the same day as they are tabled. However, the reply to this question—'unstarred' question number 668—was not uploaded till Monday and the question had been removed from several sections of the website.

Reacting to the development, Manoranjan S Roy alleged: “The way the question was removed from the website and then the reply had to be uploaded, it indicates that the BJP government has a lot to answer. It only confirms that several BJP leaders including the party president have been direct beneficiaries of the demonetisation that helped them convert black money into white.”