Update: After being forced to adjourn the matter due to other cases taking longer, the new date set for the Cryptocurrency Matter’s hearing is Oct 03, 2018
The Supreme Court of India has pushed the hearing of the case against RBI Diktat to tomorrow, i.e September 12, 2018, as the court got caught up in another case.
Case 1076/ 2017 clubbed with others, was listed to be heard by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and Justice Indu Malhotra. The hearing of another case 8166/2018 took up a lot of Court No. 9’s time and hence, the hearing of Cryptocurrency case was pushed to tomorrow. Initially, the case was moved to post lunch time of 2:00 PM, subsequently to 3:30 PM and only then the matter was adjourned to tomorrow, as reported by @CryptoKanoon on twitter. The news was also confirmed by Varun Sethi who goes by @BlockchainLaw91.
During the previous dates, the case was heard by the chief Justice of India with Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud.
According to the court records, RBI submitted a counter affidavit on September 8. Today it was expected to receive arguments from other respondents like SEBI. It was revealed recently that SEBI did tours to multiple countries to study cryptocurrency and ICOs.
In the last hearing, Senior advocate Mr. Gopal Subramaniam argued on behalf of IAMAI that in a world of digitalisation, such a circular from RBI would be a loss. Adv. Harpreet Singh Ajmani, the representating counsel for RBI, was present at the Supreme Court today to further the argument.
On April 5, 2018 during the first bi-monthly monetary policy press conference, the RBI issued a ban on regulated entities from dealing with cryptocurrency exchanges and individuals or business that deal in cryptocurrency in activities such as trading. The exchanges and individuals affected by the RBI diktat took it to the Apex court. But there were a couple of matters around cryptocurrency already pending in court and all the cases were now combined.
It was Siddharth Dalmia and Dwaipayan Bhowmick who initiated their respective court cases related to cryptocurrencies in India back in 2017. Dalmia wants to ban cryptocurrencies, Bhowmick wants the government to make their stance clear on Cryptocurrencies. The case got major attention when exchanges and individual traders from all over the country knocked the door of justice to fight RBI’s banking ban. All cases were combined into one and were scheduled for final disposal today but we have to wait one more day until the court begins hearing.
In other news, Government has setup a committee headed by DEA secretary Mr. Subhash Chandra Garg to take a decision of regulation of cryptocurrency in India. Latest reports suggest the regulations could come in effect by the end of the year.
