Around 2014, before Mr Narendra Modi took over as the PM of India, it was the Supreme Court which was trying to push the Government to take action to curb black money in India. Since then the Modi Government has taken some steps including the “Demonetization” but the political opponents have been working persistently against any measures that the Government wants to take to curb black money.
It was one such move to link the Aadhar to property ownership to curb benami property holdings that finally nailed Mr Modi’s efforts. To prevent this move, the Black money supporters moved the Supreme Court alleging that the Aadhaar use is infringing Privacy. The way the then Supreme Court handled the Aadhaar case with a pre determined zeal to find fault in Aadhaar indicated that there was a real danger of Aadhaar being declared illegal. Some late realization that this would have resulted in a a great damage to the country which had already built an infrastructure for Aadhaar use for Direct Benefit transfer, made the Supreme Court climb down on its aggression and let Aadhaar live to se another day. Otherwise there was no proper ground to reject the “Virtual Aadhaar Scheme” to let Aadhaar be used by private sector.
Since then the Supreme Court has not inspired confidence that it is interested in curbing black money growth in India.
This view was reinforced in the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Bitcoin. The decision of the three member bench of the supreme Court on 4th March 2019 by judges M/s Rohinton Fali Nariman, Aniruddha Bose and V Subrmanian, which appeared to be a specially crafted judgement to allow it to be misused by the Bitcoin criminals was like a “Bollywood Story”.
Emboldened by the favourable decision from the Supreme Court, the Crypto currency industry has already given a warning to the RBI that they will destroy the economic structure of India.
Naavi.org has been waging a war on Bitcoins for a long time and would not take this blessing from the Supreme Court lying down. We will continue to call out the fact that the Supreme Court judgement of March 4th was a clever camouflage to allow Bitcoins to be used as the “Digital Black Money” in India.
Mr Narendra Modi is too busy with fighting the Corona Virus and Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman has to deal with some of her own bureaucrats in the Finance ministry who would like Bitcoins to proliferate. But we will keep the heat on as another Supreme Court hearing in the matter is reported to be scheduled.
We urge the Supreme Court to wake up. The citizens of this country are watchful and any attempt to support the Bitcoins through ambiguous judgement will be brought to the open and if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is worried about the honour of the Supreme Court, he has to take control and restore the judicial oversight on the dilution of the efforts to control black money in India.
In this connection, I want to draw the attention of the honourable CJI to the following article “Where to Buy Bitcoin in India: Cryptocurrency Exchanges Lower Their Fees”
The honourable judges should note that the article starts with a sentence “Since the supreme court lifted the RBI ban, more people have been looking to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in India. Responding to community feedback, a number of cryptocurrency exchanges have lowered their fees as the Indian crypto sector continues to grow…”
Is any further proof is required to recognize that the judgement of Rohinton Fali Nariman, Aniruddha Bose and V Subrmanian, is the basis for promotion of Bitcoin business in India. We will not be surprised if more such articles appear claiming the endorsement of the Supreme Court for Bitcoins, the currency of criminals and terrorists.
If these judges have any understanding of the developments they should take action against the Bitcoin exchanges who are putting out such reports which are misleading to say that the Supreme Court decision is in favour of Bitcoins.
Since I donot expect these judges to eat their own words, I request the CJI to move in, keep the judgement in abeyance and take a review by a larger bench.
Otherwise we have to conclude that Supreme Court is in favour of creating a digital black money economy through Crypto currencies and destroy the RBI backed sovereign system of currency in India.
Naavi
