The Supreme Court has said that the union government’s decision to impose a ban on the old 500- and 1000-rupees currency notes was legal. A 5-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, in its 4:1 verdict, said that the government had followed the legal procedure and hence, the decision was legitimate. The aim of demonetization was to curb crimes like hoarding of black money and terror funding. The bench added that now, it does not matter whether the aim was achieved or not, because the court can look into the legal angle of the decision, but not into the economic effect of the same.
The verdict was decided upon on 7th December, after the hearing of 58 different petitions filed against 2016’s demonetization. The supreme court bench comprised Justice S. Abdul Nazeer, Justice BR Gawai, Justice AS Bopanna, Justice V Ramasubramaniam, and Justice BV Nagratna. Justice BV Nagratna’s verdict was the different one. He labelled demonetization to be illegal and stated that the RBI worked according to the will of the government, and neither did it suggest demonetization, nor requested it, and still, demonetization took place.
Reacting to the court’s verdict, former Finance Minister of India, P. Chidambaram of the Congress, said that it has been made clear from the verdict that demonetization affected the country’s economy adversely, on top of which the people suffered as well.
