Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday said his comments on demonetisation were distorted, reported PTI. He said he had always supported the Centre’s move. Naidu heads the panel set up by the Centre to look into problems faced by people in the country after the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. His Telugu Desam Party is part of the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

The panel will meet again on December 28 to discuss ways to deal with demonetisation-related problems. “I spoke to [NITI Aayog chief] Amitabh Kant this morning and asked him to convene the meeting,” Naidu said. He also added that he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting demonetisation of high-value currency notes long before the decision was announced by the government on November 8.

He said the problems being faced by the people of the country was because the available infrastructure was not put to use effectively. “There is attitude problem. We could not make use of the available infrastructure and we could not innovate,” the chief minister said. He also said that he was “pained” that welfare pensions could not be distributed on time this month. “I was so angry. I gave a warning to the banks and then the RBI acted. From now on, we will distribute pensions physically and not through banks,” Naidu said.

On Tuesday, he had said, “Demonetisation was not our wish but it happened. More than 40 days after demonetisation, there are still a lot of problems but yet there appears to be no solution,” he said. Naidu had said that he had been “breaking his head daily” to find solutions to the problems caused by demonetisation, however, he had not been successful at it. He had also reportedly said that the banks were not ready for the transition to digital economy yet.

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes will no longer be a legal tender, the TDP in a Facebook post claimed credit for it and said it was a “victory for Chandrababu over his fight on corruption”. On November 29, he had also said that the “demonetisation problems are temporary but the gains in the long run will be fruitful”.