Why did you go back on your promise to allow the exchange of demonetised note: SC to government

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the government to explain why it closed a window for people to deposit demonetised currency notes at the central bank despite an earlier promise to keep it open till the end of March. The government will have to explain its stand on Friday, the next date of hearing of the case.

The court earlier scoffed at a claim of one of the litigants who said she did not have enough time to deposit a “substantial amount” of currency notes made invalid by demonetisation.

“There was a big hungama over (demonetisation). Who did not know of this? You could have signed over a power of attorney (to deposit the old notes). You can still go to the government and ask for a relaxation,” Chief Justice JS Khehar asked her counsel Dhruv Mehta. The CJI, who was sitting alongside Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul, was hearing two petitions challenging the government move to withdraw the window to deposit old notes.

The CJI commented that there seemed to be no prima facie case in the litigant’s arguments. But the court decided to seek an explanation from the government in the face of Mehta’s claim that the government kept seeking KYC details and creating a delay, which caused the December 31 deadline to deposit the notes with banks to lapse.

“We are not challenging demonetisation,” Mehta told the court. He argued that the Prime Minister in his speech and the Reserve Bank of India had held out the hope that the deadline to deposit the notes with the RBI would lapse only at the end of March.

However, his client’s hopes were belied as the RBI closed the window while saying that only those travelling abroad during a certain time could deposit old notes with it. Not only that, he argued, holding old notes has now been made an offence.