The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it will only decide on the legal issue whether citizens can be entitled to a grace period beyond March 31 to deposit their old demonetised currency and will not go by individual cases.
Putting the issue for consideration beyond summer vacation, the Bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar said, “Our decision will be whether there has to be a window or not for the petitioners before us. If we hold there is, all who are before the Court will be benefitted.”
The observation came after several petitioners complained that the Centre in its response submitted to the Court refused to deal with the facts narrated by individual petitioners who had approached the Court. Advocate Kamini Jaiswal said that the Centre only dealt with the facts of a company having Rs 68 lakh in old currency which they failed to deposit by December 31, 2016. However, in her case, she added, her client was out of the country and genuinely fell within the category specified by the Ordinance issued by the Centre. Yet, RBI refused to accept her deposit.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that it was not possible for Centre to deal with each individual case. The order of the Court required the Centre to spell out whether a window can be given to the petitioners to which the Centre replied in the negative. “If we are looking at providing a window, the facts of individual cases become irrelevant,” Rohatgi said.
Jaiswal said, “Even for opening the window, you need to consider the facts of each case.” The Bench, also comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul responded by saying, “While deciding the bunch of cases, we had started with individual cases. But later we decided to first take a call on whether petitioners are entitled to get a window for payment.”
The Centre in its affidavit stated that no window can be given as the decision to stop receiving further deposit was a conscious decision taken on December 30 last year. The only concession was given to NRIs and people who were abroad during the period of demonetization to deposit the scrapped currency notes with the Reserve Bank of India before March 31 this year.