Senior Advocate and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told the Supreme Court on Thursday that neither the Reserve Bank of India's Central Board nor the Union Cabinet had complete information about the monumental consequences of demonetisation.

The five-judge Bench, comprised of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, B.R. Gavai, A.S. Bopanna, V. Ramasubramanian, and B.V. Nagarathna, is considering, among other things, the legality of the November 8 circular that launched the policy six years ago.

Chidambaram theorised, "My calculation shows that this entire exercise was done in about 26 hours. The letter reached the RBI on November 7 post-afternoon, after which the Central Board was called, presumably by telephone to meet in Delhi on November 8. They meet at 5:30 PM, within an hour or an hour and a half, the recommendation is taken by hand to the Cabinet, which is waiting. Then, the Prime Minister goes on television at 8 PM." Expressing his profound disapproval, the senior counsel said, "This is the most outrageous decision-making process which makes a mockery of the rule of law."

The senior counsel also noted that neither the Central Government nor the Reserve Bank had provided material details about the decision-making process in their counter-affidavits. There were discrepancies between the affidavits filed by the Centre and the bank. For example, while the latter's testimony cited financial inclusion and incentivisation, digitisation, and shifting to a cashless economy as reasons for carrying out the note-bandi exercise, no such insinuations were made in the Ministry of Finance's 2016 notification.

Case Title: Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India and other connected matters

Citation: WP (C) No. 906/2016