Patna, Dec. 4: Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who was in Patna today, dubbed demonetisation as a move to legalise ill-gotten money of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's friends, a day after chief minister Nitish Kumar in New Delhi iterated his support for the move.

The Congress leader, however, downplayed the difference of views with Nitish. "Even Nitish Kumar has spoken against the lack of preparations made by the Union government before implementing the decision, which has led to economic chaos", Digvijay said.

Congress party sources said the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister was only reasserting the party's stand on demonetisation. "But the timing is important as comes a day after Nitish Kumar again came in support of demonetisation," a senior Congress leader said on condition of anonymity. "Incidentally, Digvijay also met RJD chief Lalu Prasad before holding the press meet."

Digvijay told reporters that demonetisation "is a colossal example of failure of governance" and demanded a white paper from the Centre on it. A white paper is a detailed explanation on a complex issue. In May 2012, the finance ministry under then minister Pranab Mukherjee had published a white paper on black money.

Digvijay reasserted his party's demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe. "The PM has said that that he was making preparations for demonetisation 10 months before he announced it," he said. "We want to know how many meetings he held on the issue and with whom. I am told that even his chief economic adviser did not know about the move."

He pointed out that the Union government had been tweaking guidelines ever since announcing the move: "They say something in the morning and change it in the evening."

Digvijay rattled off a list of charges against the BJP to allege that the party had transferred huge money before November 8 - such as the Bengal BJP depositing money in bank accounts, the Bihar unit buying land and a Punjab leader posting pictures of wads of new currency on social media - which he said were clear indications that BJP knew demonetisation was coming.

He also said the Modi government had increased the limit of foreign remittances from India before demonetisation. "Net effect was that foreign remittances from India which were in the rage of Rs 10,400 crore per year have increased in one year to around Rs 30,000 crore," he said.

He said the Jan Dhan accounts were blatantly misused to convert black money into white - "Rs 75,000 crore has been deposited in these accounts... in the first 17 days 17 lakh new accounts were added" - and questioned the government's decision to that effectively gives 50 per cent waiver to persons declaring black money.

He pointed out that according to the RBI, an additional Rs 5.88 lakh crore was deposited with banks between July and August 2016. "This unparalleled increase in the bank deposits itself tells the story of black money," he said.,

He ridiculed the Prime Minister's claim that demonetisation was a fight against black money, counterfeit currency, corruption and terrorism. "Already there are reports of officials caught taking bribe in new currency," Digvijay pointed out.