The Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned to July a clutch of PILs that have sought another window to deposit demonetised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. A bench led by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar deferred the hearing after counsel for the parties expressed inability to argue the matter effectively in the absence of central government’s replies to their petitions separately. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi pointed out that the government has filed its response in one of these matters, elucidating the stand that the authorities were not willing to permit people deposit old notes after the deadline of December 30, 2016. “I can either answer on the legal points or on facts. We have already answered the queries raised by this court on the last date without going into facts of each of these petitions,” he contended. As some of the counsel complained that they did not even have the government’s response in the first matter, the bench decided to adjourn the matter after summer vacation, in July. In its affidavit filed on Friday, the finance ministry stood firm on the decision to not extend the deadline, and highlighted statistics to buttress its argument that wide-spread malpractices and gross misuse of exemptions granted for use of old notes called for immediate steps to check the irregularities to ensure demonetisation achieved its objectives. About the need to issue an Ordinance to fix a deadline of December 30 for using old notes, the government said: “It was necessary to promulgate the said Ordinance since it was incumbent upon the Central government to inter-alia have clarity and finality to the liabilities of the RBI as well as the Centre arising from such specified bank notes which had ceased to be legal tender.” The government maintained that the Ordinance had an overriding effect on all previous notifications, including the one that had mentioned people would be allowed to deposit and exchange old notes until March 31, 2017. The affidavit, however, did not mention anything on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement on November 8 when he had also said people would be permitted to exchange old notes until March 31, 2017. “The Central government took a conscious decision that no necessity or any justifiable reason exists, either in law or on facts, to invoke its power under Section 4(1)(ii) of the Ordinance to entitle any person to tender within the grace period the specified bank notes,” said the affidavit, as it also mentioned that ‘Operation Clean Money’ project has been initiated by the I-T department for people to declare unaccounted cash and deposits post demonetisation, with latest compliance window ending on March 31. The government has responded to two pointed queries made by a bench led by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar on March 21. While hearing a clutch of petitions that sought extension of the deadline, the bench had asked the government to respond whether they intended to exercise their power to grant further time for exchange of old notes and if not, the reasons for such indisposition.
