Hope for those still holding on to old currency

The Supreme Court on Friday dangled a rope for those who are still holding onto demonetised notes that they could not deposit for a valid reason.

A Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and Justice D Y Chandrachud told a batch of 14 petitioners, including NRIs who could not deposit their scrapped notes within the window provided by the Reserve Bank of India and others aggrieved, to implead themselves before the Constitution Bench to which the issue of validity of the demonetisation of Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 500 notes was referred last December. A five-judge Constitution Bench would deal with this aspect besides

deciding the validity of Centre's decision to demonetise currency notes. The court's order came while disposing of the individual petitions.

The government had enacted a law subsequent to demonetisation in November last year, holding possession of scrapped notes by anyone as a crime, but on the court's goading Attorney General K K Venugopal assured that the government will not take any coercive action against the petitioners for possessing demonetised currency.

The 14 petitioners contended that they had neither challenged the constitutional validity of the demonetisation nor the provisions of the RBI Act. They just want to deposit their old currency notes.

"Our hard-earned money has been confiscated without due process of law and without granting us a fair opportunity to deposit them," lawyer Pranav Sachdeva, appearing for one of the petitioners said.

The petitioners included NRIs as well as those medically incapacitated or whose money was in police custody and the police did not bother to get it exchanged.