The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the 58 petitions challenging the Union government’s 2016 decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes, while observing that the decision, which was taken by the Executive’s Economic Policy, cannot be reversed now.
The five-Judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice S. Abdul Nazeer, ruled that the making-process was not flawed.
Justice B.R. Gavai, Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice V. Ramasubramanian agreed to the verdict, while Justice BV Nagarathna, who was also part of the Bench, gave dissenting views.
The Apex Court said that the 52-day window provided for exchange of demonetised currency notes with legal tenders was not unreasonable and cannot be extended now. It said The High Denomination Bank Notes (Demonetisation) Act, 1978 had fixed the window for exchange of demonetised bank notes to three days, which was extended by another five days.
The bench ruled that the demonetisation decision did not suffer from any legal or constitutional flaws, and that the petitions could be placed before an appropriate bench by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) for deciding issues linked to the main issue relating to the validity of demonetisation process.
Justice B.V. Nagarathna differed with the majority judgment authored by Justice Gavai and said it missed the main issue – RBI should initiate the demonetisation process and not the Centre. As this was reversed in 2016, the demonetisation decision was legally flawed, she said.
Justice Nagarathna said demonetisation process was illegal but as the proess took place six years ago, it cannot be reversed. She said as demonetisation resulted in very harsh situations for the citizens, it should have been done only after passing a legislation in Parliament.
However, she said the decision was well-intended and its object were to combat the depraved practices of black money, terror funding and other such practices.
The judgment authored by Justice Gavai was agreed to by Justice Nazeer, Justice Bopanna and Justice V. Ramasubramanian. The dissenting judgment was delivered by Justice Nagarathna, who though termed the process as being a faulted one, did not quash the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.
The post Supreme Court terms demonetisation valid, says the decision taken by Executive’s Economic Policy cannot be reversed appeared first on India Legal.
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