No new window for old notes: Centre

New Delhi: The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that holding old cash of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes which were scrapped by the government on November 8, 2016, after the deadline of December 31, 2106 is illegal and the window for depositing such notes could not be opened now.

The Centre in its affidavit filed through Lt. Col. R. Balasubramanian made this submission in a batch of petitions challenging the government decision not to accept old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes beyond December 31, 2106 though earlier it was announced by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016 that deposits can be made upto March 31, 2017.

The Centre said that the very object of demonetisation and elimination of black money will be defeated if a window is opened for a further period as the persons in possession of the old notes would have had sufficient time and opportunity to carefully plan the reasons and excuses for not depositing the SBNs within the permitted period that is before 30.12.2016.

Any number of benami transactions and user proxies for the purpose of producing and depositing SBNs would then arise which the departments would have great difficulty in deciding any genuine case from the numerous bogus ones.