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Synopsis

While again refusing urgent listing of the plea filed by Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay challenging Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) notification that permits exchange of Rs. 2000 banknotes without any requisition slip or identity proof, a vacation bench of the Supreme Court today said that it could not issue orders against the order passed by its coordinate bench.

"..the court's order of listing on re-opening cannot be buried by us..no urgency", Justice Aniruddha Bose remarked.

Justice Rajesh Bindal, at the beginning questioned, "When you first mentioned this, what was said..".

"Orally I was told that it will be listed post re-opening...", Advocate Upadhyay responded.

Hearing this, the bench said that there was no urgency in the matter.

Two days ago, the Supreme Court had said that it would ask for the Registry's report on the said plea. Court had further questioned petitioner Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay on his repeated mentioning of the plea and said, "Was this mentioned earlier? After a direction was given that it should be mentioned after the court reopens, how can you mention again before a different bench...".

Upadhyay today told court that money was being hoarded by gangsters and there were media reports saying 80,000 crores was exchanged between maoists and terrorists.

Hearing this Justice Bose said, "We'll seek a report from registry on this. We grant you liberty to mention this on Friday."

Notably, on June 1, Upadhyay had mentioned the same plea before a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and KV Vishwanathan, which had asked him to come after the court reopens and refused to accept the urgent mentioning.

Last week, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad of the Delhi High Court had "dismissed" a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against permission to exchange Rs. 2,000 denomination banknotes without obtaining any requisition slip and identity proof.

High Court on May 23, had "reserved order" in the PIL. While reserving the order, the bench had said, “We will pass appropriate orders”.

The PIL filed by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay challenged the two notifications issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on May 19 and the State Bank of India (SBI) on May 20, as arbitrary, irrational, and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

Upadhyay, through the plea, sought directions to the RBI and SBI to ensure that Rs. 2000 banknotes are deposited in respective bank accounts only so that no one could deposit the money in others' bank accounts and people having black money and disproportionate assets could be identified easily.

Case Title: Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay vs. Union of India & Ors.