The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the Government’s move to demonetise high value currency notes was not “illegal” but common man in the country cannot be made to stand in queues for hours together, which needs to be remedied at the earliest.
Setting a one-week deadline till November 25 for the Centre to file an affidavit, the Bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice DY Chandrachud directed the Centre to indicate what measures it intends to take to ease the inconvenience to the general public. The court was hearing a set of four PIls seeking withdrawal of the Government’s notification of November 8, 2016 to demonetise `500 and `1,000 currency notes.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and advocate Kamini Jaiswal appearing for two petitioners told the Court that in the name of “surgical strike against black money”, the Government did a “carpet bombing against common man”. Pointing to the situation across all States countrywide, Sibal argued that the general public cannot be made to suffer so much inconvenience by waiting in queues to withdraw their life’s earning. On the other hand, Sibal even questioned the legality of the Centre’s decision to impose a limit on withdrawal from bank, which had severely hampered daily life of citizens, besides trade and business.
The Bench was not inclined to stay the Government’s decision as it told Sibal, “We will not grant stay,” but was convinced that although laudable, the decision aimed to wipe out black money cannot inflict collateral damage on the common man.
The Court asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Centre whether it had any plan to ameliorate the suffering faced by the public. It said, “Carpenters, maids, vegetable sellers are dependent on cash. Are you capable of reducing their traumaIJ Your real purpose is to force thoe who have hoarded cash at home to deposit in bank and explain the source of money. We don’t want to question your fight against black money. But please do something to help the common men who are traumatised standing in queues for hours doing nothing.”
A-G came prepared to defend the Government and presented facts to suggest that the decision has caused a setback to those fuelling terror in the North East and Jammu & Kashmir. Presenting an estimate, he submitted that the Centre had calculated the black money estimate in the country to be around `15 lakh crore. Already, the banks have mopped up `4-5 lakh crore idle cash from customers since November 8. “We expect this figure to increase to `11 lakh crore by the end of this week,” A-G added.
Pointing to the hassles faced by public waiting outside banks in queues, A-G explained that the problem was due to an “availability crunch” of the new currency notes of `500 and `2,000. The printing press is working day and night to resolve the problem, he said, adding that current account holders and companies have been permitted transaction upto `50,000.