: The Madras High Court Bench here on Friday directed Assistant Solicitor General (ASG) G.R. Swaminathan to take notice on behalf of Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and the Union Finance Secretary of a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to the Centre to ensure availability of sufficient funds in banks and ATMs.
A Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiyarasan also directed Central Government Standing Counsel K.R. Laxman too to take notice on behalf of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and ordered that counter affidavits should be filed by the respondents on or before January 2.
Though the ASG told the court that the Supreme Court was seized of a batch of cases filed against demonetisation and that the present issue raised before the High Court was also in a way connected to the cases pending there, the Division Bench refused to desist from hearing the case on that ground.
Mr. Justice Selvam said that the batch of cases related to demonetisation of Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 currency notes had nothing to do with the present plea for ensuring that bank branches and ATMs were provided with sufficient funds to meet the day-to-day requirements of the common man. The judge also agreed with the PIL petitioner, K.K. Ramesh of the Centre for Public Interest Litigation based here, that people were being subjected to great hardship due to non availability of sufficient cash in banks and ATMs since November 9 when demonetisation came into effect.
“You (Centre) had created the problem. Therefore, only you should solve it,” the judge told the ASG before adjourning the hearing to January 2.
