New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday asked the federal government to consider giving another chance to those who could not deposit old notes in banks for genuine reasons in the aftermath of the Narendra Modi-government’s November 8 demonetisation decision.
Criticising the federal government over its December 30 deadline to deposit old currency notes of Rs1,000 and Rs500 in banks, the SC Bench said: “You can’t take away my money if I was terminally ill.”
“You can’t be allowed to deprive a person of his money if he couldn’t deposit it due to genuine problems. There will be a serious problem if you don’t look into it. Give a window to a genuine problem. What if someone is terminally ill and couldn’t deposit the money? Don’t force us to pass a three-line order and quash your December 30 notification,” the Court further stated.
On Tuesday, the SC gave two weeks’ time to the Centre and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to decide on giving more time to people with genuine reasons to deposit the scrapped currency notes.
Earlier, the government had told the Court that it was not legally bound to come out with a fresh notification to grant grace period for depositing old notes.
Earlier in April, the central government had told SC that it took a “conscious decision” not to extend the period beyond December 30 last year.
“It is most humbly submitted that 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,” the government had stated in its affidavit.
The deadline for non-resident Indians (NRIs) to deposit the demonetised currency ended on March 31.
The government notification in this regard said that “only those who were abroad, the armed forces personnel posted in remote areas or others who could give valid reasons for not being able to deposit the cancelled notes at banks, could deposit demonetised currency notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000 till March 31 this year after the deadline expired on December 30, 2016.”