The Attorney-General for India, R. Venkataramani, told the Supreme Court on Friday that the government's good intentions and policy perspectives should not be written off as out of whack because the government took into account the bigger picture of contemporary monetary challenges in an increasingly complex economy when it announced demonetisation.

"The petitioners have argued that the government has failed in achieving their stated objectives, which is why the government's policy perspective is completely wrong. No well-meaning person would say that our intentions were flawed. Very loudly it has been suggested that we should have had specific surveys, empirical data, et cetera. We are talking about the nation's economy. Demonetisation should not be looked at in isolation because it was not a standalone measure. It has larger ramifications."

Six years after it sent shockwaves through the nation, the five-judge bench, made up of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, B.R. Gavai, A.S. Bopanna, V. Ramasubramanian, and B.V. Nagarathna, is debating a number of issues, including the legality of the November 8 circular that initiated the policy.

"Fake currency and black money are such enemies that cannot be easily identified. They wear masks all the time. It is easy to ask us to look at rational standards, the volume of money that was taken out of circulation, and the amount of money that has come back into circulation. But they should look at the complexity of the problem. The formal economy was being derailed because of fake currency and black money," Venkataramani told the Constitution Bench.

The law officer also rejected the argument that, in accordance with Subsection (2) of Section 26, the Reserve Bank of India was required to apply its judgement independently and, as a result, should have been the one to make the suggestion to demonetize high-value currency notes.He said, "The monetary policy and the economic policy of a country are all so intrinsically connected. Therefore, the government and the Reserve Bank have a symbiotic relationship. It cannot be said that the Reserve Bank should have applied its mind completely insulated from the government."

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

Citation: WP (C) No. 906/2016