Govt: No penalty for keeping old notes

New Delhi: The Centre informed the Supreme Court on Friday that no penal action would be taken against all those who had approached the top court seeking extension of time limit for depositing old `500 and `1,000 notes post demonetisation.

The Central government on Friday informed the Supreme Court that no penal action would be taken against all those who had approached the top court seeking extension of time limit for depositing old `500 and `1,000 notes post demonetisation.

Attorney-general K.K. Venugopal gave this assurance before a threejudge bench of Chief justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud during the course of hearing of a fresh writ petition seeking time for depositing the old notes.

Following this, assurance from the A-G, the bench did not pass any order though advocate Pranav Sachdeva insisted on permission to allow the petitioners to deposit the old notes with the government for now.

A constitutional bench is already examining the validity of demonetisation.

It was submitted that some of the petitioners are old, sick and some were abroad and they should be allowed to deposit their notes.

In response it said, “How can we do that?” CJI Misra demanded to know.

Instead, he said that all these petitions would now come up for hearing along with other petitions challenging the government decision to demonetise old notes.