One last opportunity to deposit the 500- and 1,000-rupee notes that were banned in November will defeat the whole point of demonetisation as well as the battle against black money, according to the government of India.
The top court had asked the centre to consider a final window to benefit those with a genuine reason for not turning in the outlawed notes by the end of last year.
The deadline that was set by the RBI after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's shock announcement on demonetisation.
Different citizens' appeals were clubbed together by the Supreme Court.
But the government complained today of “the gross misuse or abuse” of previous extensions or exceptions that allowed old notes to be used to book railway tickets or at petrol pumps among others.
Allowing a new opportunity to deposit the banned notes would result in “any number of benami transactions” and make it difficult for departments to distinguish “genuine cases from bogus ones”, the centre warned.
The PM said the short notice was vital to ensure that black money holders were deprived of the opportunity to launder their money.
However, the RBI says it has still not determined the exact figure of the returned notes. By the end of December, banks had received virtually all the currency notes that had been banned - which implied that no black money had been destroyed.
INR 15.5 lakh crore was the value of the outlawed currency - about INR 15 lakh crore was accounted for in deposits by the end of 2016, said several reports.
The last official estimate from the RBI, shared in mid-December, pegged the returned notes at Rs. 12.5 lakh crore.
