Centre ‘no’ to old notes swap

The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that holding old cash of `500 and `1,000 notes, which were scrapped by the government on November 8, 2016, after the deadline of December 31, 2106 is illegal and the window for depositing such notes could not be opened now.

The Centre in its affidavit filed through Lt. Col. R. Balasubramanian made this submission in a batch of petitions challenging the government decision not to accept old notes beyond December 31, 2106 though earlier it was announced by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016 that deposits can be made upto March 31, 2017.

The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that holding old cash of `500 and `1,000 notes, which were scrapped by the government on November 8, 2016, after the deadline of December 31, 2106 is illegal and the window for depositing such notes could not be opened now.

The Centre said that the very object of note ban and elimination of black money will be defeated if a window is opened for a further period as the persons in possession of the old notes would have had sufficient time and opportunity to carefully plan the reasons and excuses for not depositing the Specified Bank Notes within the permitted period that is before 30.12.2016.

Any number of benami transactions and user proxies for the purpose of producing and depositing SBNs would then arise which the departments would have great difficulty in deciding any genuine case from the numerous bogus ones.

The Centre said in many cases, in order to avoid depositing of cash in own accounts directly, money was routed through accounts of shell companies and was layered through ‘intermediaries’ accounts before being received in accounts of bullion traders. There was gross abuse of the exemptions granted for use of old SBNs.