“Publicity Interest Litigation”: Orissa High Court Dismisses PIL Against RBI Circular Allowing Exchange Of ₹2000 Notes Without ID Proof

The Orissa High Court on Tuesday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the circular dated May 19, 2023 issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which announced discontinuance from circulation of ₹2000 notes and allowed people to get them exchanged at banks without any identity proof.

While terming the petition to be a ‘publicity interest litigation’, the Vacation Division Bench of Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Justice Murahari Sri Raman observed,

“Law is well settled a public interest litigation is a weapon which has to be used with great care and circumspection and the judiciary has to be extremely careful to see that behind the beautiful veil of public interest, a publicity seeking is not lurking… A publicity interest litigation should be nipped in the bud so that valuable time of the Court is saved which can be effectively utilized in reducing huge pendency of cases.”

The PIL was filed by activist Jayanti Das primarily on the ground that the RBI has not issued guidelines for exchange of the said banknotes, like the persons who exchange the currency to fill up forms mentioning all the details like occupation, monthly income, permanent address, whether ration card holder or not, mobile number Aadhaar card, PAN card, mentioning whether he is doing the exchange for self or for somebody else etc. which, she contended, would have checked the unlawful entry of persons to the banking system.

She also highlighted that the notification allows even a non-account holder to exchange ₹2,000/- banknotes up to a limit of Rs. 20,000/- at a time at any bank branch.

“This particular instruction of RBI is only made for encouragement of converting black money into white, it can be inferred that the same person can exchange several times repeatedly standing in the same queue and the concerned bank does not have KYC of that person and without any risk a person can exchange any amount of Rs.2,000/- bank notes as no documentation is done and no identity card is checked. There cannot be more blunder than this and threat to the economy as RBI is allowing the conversion of black money into white legally on the pretext of clean money policy”, she added.

The petitioner also questioned as to why only the denomination of ₹2000 has been decided to be discontinued and not any other denomination lifespan of which has already expired and are in mutilated condition and which were printed much prior to ₹2000 notes.

She, therefore, prayed the Court to issue direction to provide the details of the minutes and the office note with name and designation of the officers of RBI who passed such policy and survey report which confirmed that ₹2000 banknotes are mutilated and life span has expired based on which they issued circular for withdrawal of ₹2000 banknotes from circulation.

The petitioner further doubted the existence of sufficient checks and balances which shall facilitate the system to identify black money in the process of exchange and thereby, get hold of black-money holders.

However, after perusing the petition and hearing the contentions, the Court referred to the decision rendered by the Delhi High Court last month which had dismissed a similar petition and relied on a number of judgments handed down by the Supreme Court to hold that Court should not sit over economic policies of the State.

The Court also quoted the following words of the Apex Court in Vivek Narayan Sharma & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. (Constitution Bench judgment on legality of 2016 demonetization):

“We are, therefore, of the considered view that the Court must defer to legislative judgment in matters relating to social and economic policies and must not interfere unless the exercise of executive power appears to be palpably arbitrary. The Court does not have necessary competence and expertise to adjudicate upon such economic issues.”

Having regard for the aforesaid position of law, the Court concluded,

“…we are of the view that the present writ petition is a publicity interest litigation in the garb of public interest and thus, we are not inclined to entertain the same. Accordingly, the writ petition being devoid of merits, stands dismissed.”

Case Title: Smt. Jayanti Das v. Union of India & Ors.

Case No: W.P.(C) No. 17775 of 2023

Order Dated: May 06, 2023

Counsel for the Petitioner: Mr. B.K. Ragada, Advocate

Counsel for the Respondents: Mr. Prasanna Kumar Parhi, Deputy Solicitor General of India

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Ori) 66

Click Here To Read/Download Order