Hardships faced can’t be seen as shortfall of demonetisation: Centre to SC -Abraham Thomas

-Hindustan Times

The petitioners had questioned whether the Government carried out any study linking demonetisation as an effective tool to achieve the objectives of curbing black money, terror financing or fake currency.

Hardships caused due to demonetisation cannot be the basis for faulting the Government’s 2016 notification to ban currency notes of 500 and 1000, the Centre told the Supreme Court, adding that the cutoff date December 30 fixed by the Centre to deposit old currency notes did not violate the fundamental rights of citizens.

Defending the November 8, 2016 notification by which nearly 86% of the currency in circulation was withdrawn, Attorney General R Venkatramani said, “Difficulties and issues that might have arisen in the course of giving effect to the notification (of November 8) and the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act, 2017 cannot be said to be flaws, affecting the decision-making process.”

He was responding to a bunch of petitions challenging the power of the Government to issue the November 8 notification, procedural flaws in the process followed, and the loss caused to several citizens who failed to deposit the demonetised currency by December 30, 2016 for various reasons. A bench of justices S Abdul Nazeer, BR Gavai, AS Bopanna, V Ramasubramanian and BV Nagarathna will continue hearing the matter on Tuesday.

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