NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to consider individual cases seeking opening of windows to accept demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Vikram Nath said the individual petitioners can approach the government with a representation, which would be considered within a period of 12 weeks.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for a woman, contended why the people should be made to suffer.
"After the judgement of the constitution bench, we do not find it will be permissible for us to exercise our jurisdiction under Article 142 of the Constitution in individual cases to accept demonetised currency notes," the bench said.
The court, however, accepted that there could be genuine hardships but this could not be ground to intervene into the matter.
The court also added that in the event any of the petitioners are not satisfied with the action by the Union of India, they would be at liberty to approach the high court concerned.
On January 2, 2022, the top court had upheld validity of the central government's November 8, 2016 notification to demonetise currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations, saying it does not suffer from any flaws in the decision making process.
By a majority view of 4:1, a five-judge Constitution bench of by Justice S A Nazeer (since retired), B R Gavai, A S Bopanna, V Ramasubramanian, and B V Nagarathna pronounced the judgement on over 58 petitions filed by advocate Vivek Narayan Sharma and others.
Justice Gavai, who authored the majority judgment, said that decision making process cannot be faulted merely because the proposal emanated from the central government. He said the decision was not flawed, unreasonable or hit by proportionality.
The court had also declared that 52 days window for exchange of notes cannot be said to be unreasonable and can't be extended now.
It had noted under the 1978 Act, when a previous demonetisation exercise was done, three days’ period was provided for exchanging the demonetized notes.
