Inconvenience won’t last long: Centre to Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that deaths during its drive against “slush funds” are “unfortunate”, but promised that the “inconvenience” would not continue for long, insisting that queues outside banks have shortened and that banks have enough funds.

A top court bench, comprising Chief Justice of India ( CJI) TS Thakur and Justices L Nageshwar Rao and DY Chandrachud, however, refused to stay the rash of cases flooding the courts against the demonetisation drive despite a fervent plea to this effect by the government’s top law officer, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.

“All this (deaths) is unfortunate. There will be some inconvenience. But the inconvenience will not continue in the long run,” Rohatgi said.

“This is 70 years of slush money coming out,” the AG claimed, choosing to associate the spike in bank accounts to secretly stashed money used for illegal purposes such as bribery even though de-legalisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, which formed 86% of cash in circulation, has forced households across the country to deposit almost all their cash in banks.

“We have collected Rs 6 lakh crore in six days. We are expecting Rs 10 lakh crore. Banks are flush with money.

It will be used to revive the economy,” Rohatgi told the CJI who pointedly sought to know how much the government had so far collected from its demonetisation drive.

The CJI then sought to know if the situation has become better on the ground and what steps the government is taking to offer immediate relief to the people.

The AG claimed queues before banks and ATMs have shortened, and there has been a big surge in the use of digital money. “The cash transaction component across the world is around 4%, but it is 12% in ours. The attempt is to have more and more people go cashless, so that less cash is used and hoarded. The attempt is to reduce the 12% to 8%,” he said.

Rohatgi also said the government was monitoring the situation on the ground on a continuous basis. He then urged the top court to transfer all cases related to demonetisation either to itself or the Delhi High Court to be clubbed and heard together and stay all such cases for the time being, possibly to preempt any legal stay on the process. But the court refused to impose a blanket stay on all cases.