Supreme Court to hear co-op society’s plea on note ban on November 25

A bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur listed the plea for hearing on Friday when the counsel said that it was an urgent matter as the member of the co-operative society has not been able to withdraw and deposit the money. The plea has been filed by a Villupuram-based individual NK Kumar that he has not been able to withdraw his money deposited with the Gingee Primary Agricultural Society in the area. The plea said that the co-operative society has been accepting deposits and has been maintaining locker facilities. Kumar has sought an appropriate direction to respondents including the Centre and RBI to implement the regulation issued on November 8, 2016 which permitted financial institutions to pay to their customers having an account with them. Earlier, the RBI has said that certain District Co-operatives and Primary Agricultural Societies can allow its customers to withdraw money from their accounts up to Rs 24,000 per week until November 24, though the RBI has not allowed exchange of demonetised notes in such societies. The recent curbs imposed on the banking activities in these institutions have hit the rural economy hard. Especially the farmers in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat. Sources in banking sector said that the strict new RBI norms may be related to lax know your customer (KYC) norms in these institutions and suspected money laundering in some of the cooperative banks in rural areas.

Leader of Opposition MK Stalin has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold a referendum over the demonetisation issue in Parliament and to end the distress faced by the people. Talking to media persons, after launching the human chain agitation organised by his party against the Centre and State on the demonetisation issue at Purasawakam in the city, Stalin said the PM should put the issue to vote in both the Houses of Parliament to end the miseries of the common man. “Though demonetisation has been aimed at eliminating black money, the hoarders are living peacefully and poor people, who have nothing to do with dirt cash, are being put through numerous hardships,” Stalin said.  

In a fall-out of demonetisation, Melur police booked two, including a lawyer, for harassing a bank staff and the bank manager first verbally and then on the social media.  

The accused Jayaraman, an advocate and his friend Varun had gone to the Syndicate Bank, Melur branch on Monday to exchange demonetised notes. When the lawyer tried to exchange the old Rs 1,000 notes he presented the Aadhaar card of some other person. Due to this discrepancy, the bank clerk refused to exchange the notes for him. Immediately the lawyer picked up a verbal duel with the clerk and abused the bank officials by claiming that they would exchange demonetised notes only for large corporate and businessmen and would place unnecessary restrictions on common people. However, those waiting their turn in the queue diffused the tension and the lawyer went out in a huff. Not taking the rejection down so easily, Jayaraman posted the incident on his Facebook page and accused the bank of helping influential people and those with black money. He had also abused the bank manager by claiming that he was favouring the rich and government should take action against him. On seeing such defamatory posts about the bank, the bank manager Chandrasekaran filed a complaint against Jayaraman. He said that the lawyer was damaging the reputation of the bank. Based on the complaint Melur police booked a case against Jayaraman and Varun. 

Even as several litigations against demonetisation has been getting rejected by several High Courts across the country, a Public Interest Litigation has been moved at the Madras High Court seeking to declare the notification on demonetisation as illegal.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan before whom the PIL filed by Suchitra Vijayan, a Barrister-at-Law, came up for hearing, adjourned it to December 15, after the petitioner, who appeared as party in person, sought time to file a better affidavit. Interestingly, when the Central government’s counsel pointed out that the challenge to the notification has already been rejected by a division bench of the Madurai bench, the petitioner submitted that the matter was not argued well on the broader issues and that she wants to raise some additional issues on the subject. However, the bench held that “In so far as the matter was not argued well, that has to be out-rightly rejected. As regards seeking to raise additional issues, whether we can examine it or not would depend on whether firstly the petitioner can put forth as to what were the challenges raised in the earlier petition, how it has been dealt with and what are the additional aspects she seeks to urge.” Suchitra had contended that the move was an ill-considered decision, resulting in extreme hardship for the common man.

Apart from the shortage of currency, the non-functional ATMs, one of the vital venues of cash transaction, have added to the dismay of bankers, according to BEFI members.

As of now, only 82,000 machines have been recalibrated out of the 2,20,000 machines across the country, they said. This delay, say bank officials, is because each machine must be physically recalibrated to dispense the new Rs 2,000 note, which is smaller in breadth and length than the other notes. “The calculations made based on data available in government websites show that even if the four government printing presses in West Bengal, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra work for 24 hours, it would take at least five to six months to print the quantity of notes of the new denomination to generate enough currency to circulate in the system,” said CP Krishnan, state General Secretary, BEFI. The RBI’s directives to exclude District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCB) from exchanging/ depositing the defunct currency has incurred the wrath of the banking sector.  “We oppose the fact that DCCBs have been excluded while private players like Big Bazaar can exchange the currency. We want this order to be withdrawn,” said Krishnan.