A five-judge Constitution bench led by Justice S A Nazeer, who will retire on January 4, is expected to rule on the case on January 2, when the Supreme Court returns from its winter recess.
The Supreme Court will rule on a slew of petitions challenging the government’s 2016 decision to demonetize currency notes in denominations of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 on Monday.
When the Supreme Court returns from its winter recess on January 2, a five-judge Constitution bench led by Justice S A Nazeer, who will retire on January 4, is expected to rule on the case.
According to the top court’s cause list, there will be two separate judgements in the matter, pronounced by Justices B R Gavai and B V Nagarathna. It is unclear whether the two decisions will concur or disagree.
Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian join Justices Nazeer, Gavai, and Nagarathna on the five-judge bench.
A On December 7, the Supreme Court directed the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to record the relevant records relating to the government’s 2016 decision and reserved its decision.
It heard arguments from Attorney General R Venkataramani, the counsel for the Reserve Bank of India, and the petitioners’ lawyers, including senior advocates P Chidambaram and Shyam Divan.
Chidambaram had argued that the scrapping of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes was deeply flawed, and that the government cannot initiate any proposal relating to legal tender on its own, but must do so on the recommendation of the RBI’s central board.
Resisting the apex court’s attempt to revisit the 2016 demonetisation exercise, the government had said the court cannot decide a matter when no tangible relief can be granted by way of “putting the clock back” and “unscrambling a scrambled egg”.
The RBI previously admitted in its submissions that there were “temporary hardships,” which are an inevitable part of the nation-building process, but there was a mechanism in place to address any issues that arose.
The Centre recently told the Supreme Court in an affidavit that the demonetisation exercise was a “well-considered” decision that was part of a larger strategy to combat the menace of fake money, terror financing, black money, and tax evasion.
The Supreme Court heard 58 petitions challenging the demonetisation exercise announced by the Centre on November 8, 2016.
