Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Jan 2: Jairam Ramesh, an MP and the General Secretary (Communications) of the All India Congress Committee, claimed that the Supreme Court’s judgement on demonetisation has not specified whether the stated goals of this ‘disastrous’ decision were met or not.
He said that it is misleading and wrong to say the Supreme Court has upheld demonetisation, adding that the majority court’s judgement on the matter deals with the limited issue of the process of decision-making, and not with its outcomes.
“The majority Supreme Court verdict deals with the limited issue of the process of decision making not with its outcomes. To say that demonetisation has been upheld by the Honourable Supreme Court is totally misleading and wrong,” he said.
In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday upholding the Central government’s decision to demonetize the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes, Ramesh has released a statement.
“The Supreme Court has only pronounced on whether Section 26(2) of RBI Act, 1934 was correctly applied or not before announcing demonetisation on November 8 2016. Nothing more, nothing less. One Hon’ble Judge in her dissenting opinion has said that Parliament should not have been bypassed,” he said.
“It has said nothing about the impact of demonetisation which was a singularly disastrous decision. It damaged the growth momentum, crippled MSMEs, finished off the informal sector and destroyed lakhs and lakhs of livelihoods,” he added.
A group of petitions contesting the Centre’s 2016 decision to demonetize the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes were dismissed on Monday by a five-judge Constitution bench, which said that the decision could not be overturned because it was the Executive’s economic policy.
