Supreme Court questions Centre over note ban

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court questioned the Centre on Thursday on the way it had handled the aftermath of demonetisation and asked why there was unequal distribution of new currency notes among people.Indirectly pointing towards recent raids in which people were caught with stash of new notes, a bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said that demonetisation had resulted in a “problem of extreme”, with a few people managing to get plenty of notes while others struggled to get a single one.The court was also of the view that scrapped currency notes should be allowed to be used by people to access basic necessities of life. It said the old notes should be accepted in government hospital so that people could avail medical facilities. “What is your apprehension if government hospitals are allowed to accept scrapped notes? Why should people suffer if you are not able to supply new notes to them?” the bench asked and reserved its order.Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said that the inconvenience faced by people would soon be over and the court should not pass an interim order for use of scrapped currency.He said that the government had decided that Rs 8,000 crore which was collected by district cooperative banks between November 11 and 14 would be accepted by RBI, and banks could exchange the scrapped notes.The AG said black money and unaccounted cash would come back into circulation if the court allowed use of scrapped notes. He said huge sums of black money were converted into white when scrapped notes were allowed at petrol pumps and for railway reservation and there were chances that it would be repeated.Rohatgi said that the government had taken a bold decision which no other dispensation took during the last 70 years and the situation would soon become normal.“We have only 14 days left. The idea behind demonetisation was to root out black money and the government has been able to achieve its target. This country is witnessing a revolution. No other government dared to do so earlier. The government has taken a decision and its answerable to Parliament,” he said.The bench, however, drew the AG’s attention to the problems faced by common people and indicated that it may pass an interim order to reduce their inconvenience. The court asked how huge amounts in new notes were recovered from bank officials and asked the AG about the government policy on supplying new currency notes to different bank branches