The Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 12, 2022, started hearing petitions challenging the demonetization petitions. In previous proceedings, the Constitution bench of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, B.R. Gavai, A.S. Bopanna, V. Ramasubramanian, and B.V. Nagarathna expressed concern about the validity of the issue of demonization, by observing “whether it has become "academic issue if after such a long period of time."

Along the same line, the Attorney-General, R. Venkataramani, and the Solicitor-General, Tushar Mehta, also tried to convince the court of the pointlessness of probing this issue and how it would be a waste of the Constitutional Bench’s time. But moving forward with the petition, the Constitutional bench permitted the petitioner and former finance minister P. Chidambaram and Sr. Advocate Shyam Diwan to present their case. The former finance minister, P. Chidambaram, while presenting the case, emphasized the absence of a complete affidavit from either the Union of India or the RBI, as well as the reluctance of the Central Government to present the important documents, including the letter to the Reserve Bank on November 7, the agenda of the Board meeting of the Reserve Bank conducted on the very next day, and the resolution passed by the Board of Directors.

"The Union of India has filed one counter-affidavit in VN Sharma's case, which I assume is the counter-affidavit in all the cases. The RBI has filed an affidavit, which I will take as a counter-affidavit, in another case, which I will assume is the counter-affidavit in all the cases. They have not filed individual affidavits in the cases. These are the only two counter-affidavits, and subject to what this court says, we will proceed on the basis that these are two pleadings on that side... I also have no objections if they want to file a more comprehensive affidavit. "

If necessary, we will file an application to summon these documents. But, in a matter of this nature, the government should fairly place these documents before the Court. The government may be directed to place these three documents on record" added Mr. Chidamabaram.

Chidambaram, while arguing, also emphasized that under Section 26(2) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, it was not possible to demonetize all series of banknotes of any denomination by publishing a notification in the Official Gazette; as a result, it must be read down. If not, the authority granted by this clause would be "unguided and uncanalized," and as a result, would be subject to the limitations of Part III of the Constitution. Furthermore, he also said that the Reserve Bank's decision-making procedure and its proposed recommendations are "seriously defective."

After P. Chidambaram gave an overview of his submission, the court scheduled the case for the next hearing on November 9, 2022.

Case: Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union Of India [WP (C) No. 906/2016]