The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied an urgent hearing of a plea alleging interference by the Centre into the functioning of the Reserve Bank of India. A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph said it will take up the matter “in due course”, PTI reported.
“We will see to it,” the bench said when lawyer ML Sharma, who has filed the public interest litigation, sought an urgent hearing.
The petition wanted the court to order that the Centre has no “legal right” to issue any direction to the central bank. It also sought that the Ministry of Finance be directed that the RBI governor’s consultation was binding on the Centre and the president of India under the RBI Act.
The plea also asked the Supreme Court to order the Ministry of Finance, RBI and the State Bank of India “to recover the debts, along with the interest, from the corporate debtors to protect public money in the interest of justice”.
Recent news reports have suggested there is a rift between the central bank and the government. On October 26, RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya had said governments that do not respect a central bank’s independence sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets. Three days later, Reuters reported that the Centre was upset with the RBI for publicly talking about the rift.
On November 9, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg dismissed a news report which suggested that the government has sought Rs 3.6 lakh crore capital from the central bank. “Lot of misinformed speculation is going around in media,” he tweeted. “Government’s fiscal math is completely on track. There is no proposal to ask RBI to transfer Rs 3.6 or 1 lakh crore, as speculated.”
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