The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre why it had barred district cooperative banks from depositing the scrapped currency notes with the treasury or allowing customers holding accounts with these banks to withdraw money.
Noting the serious inconvenience faced by the consumers affected due to this decision announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on November 14, 2016, the Bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice DY Chandrachud told the Centre to take immediate steps in this regard.
“You (Centre) must devise a solution to their problem. There is a serious problem these banks are facing. People are suffering and they should not be inconvenienced due to your decisions,” the bench told Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi who appeared for Centre to argue transfer of all petitions on demonetisation to a single High Court.
Two top senior lawyers who appeared for Tamil Nadu and Sholapur District Cooperative Banks, namely P Chidambaram and CU Singh submitted to the Court that the problem faced by cooperative banks is distinct from the real controversy relating to the November 8 RBI notification devaluing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
“We are not challenging the November 8 notification. Our challenge is to the November 14 notification as this prevents our customers from withdrawing cash,” said Singh. He further pointed out that in Sholapur, all aided schools have transacted the salaries of their staff to the bank but no new currency is available with the bank to dispense cash. Also, the RBI has instructed the Treasury Chest maintained by State Bank of India not to accept the old currency exchanged at the Sholapur Cooperative Bank. “Between November 9 and 13, we collected a sum of Rs 2,000 crore in demonetised notes. Now we are told they wont be accepted by the Treasury.”
Chidambaram sought a stay of the notification as it severely impeded the work of the cooperative banks. “Thousands of farmers cannot take out their money and people want to pull out their savings with the bank as what good is a bank that cannot give cash,” he said. The bench told the lawyers appearing in the bunch of petitions on the demonetisation to draw out a list segregating the various categories of petitioners by Monday. “Before transferring the petitions, we need to streamline them, maybe cooperative cases can go to one court. We want to know how many such categories exist or should all petitions be heard together,” said the bench, posting the case for Monday.