A Tamil Nadu businessman who hadn’t been able to deposit Rs 1.17 crore in scrapped currency notes has approached the Supreme Court to order the Reserve Bank of India and the Centre to accept the bank deposit. The top court has issued notice to the government to respond to the petition. K Raman, the businessman from Madurai told the top court that he had approached the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank in Tiruppur, the state’s fifth largest urban centre, to deposit the money on 30 December 2016 but bank officials had declined to accept the payment. Since then, the businessman said in his petition, he had written to the authorities concerned including the central bank to seek instructions to banks on accepting his deposit. K Raman finally got a response from the Reserve Bank of India last month. The central bank told him that he could not be allowed to deposit the banned currency notes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the sudden decision to scrap Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes in a televised address to the nation on 8 November 2016, leading to a severe shortage of cash in the economy. People were initially told that they would get time to exchange the old currency notes but the next month, the government got a law passed by parliament that ended this window of opportunity on 30 December. K Raman argued that the cash that he wanted to deposit was to fund the many cheques that he had issued. He said many cases had been filed against him after cheques bounced due to insufficient funds.
