The Supreme Court will on Wednesday hear a group of petitions challenging the Union government’s demonetisation exercise that took place in November 2016, Live Law reported.

A five-judge constitution bench comprising Justices S Abdul Nazeer, BR Gavai, AS Bopanna, V Ramasubramanian and BV Nagarathna will hear the case. The petitions challenging demonetisation have been listed as the first matter before the bench.

On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would cease to be legal tender in India from midnight. Modi had said that the decision had been taken to “fight corruption, black money and terrorism”.

The Rs 2,000 notes and Rs 500 notes with a new design had been introduced after demonetisation.

Opposition parties had alleged that the exercise failed to achieve its stated objectives, and instead caused hardship to common citizens who depended on cash for their daily needs.

Several persons, many of them elderly, died while standing in long queues to exchange their money, and many killed themselves after failing to exchange old notes for valid currency.

The petitioners before the Supreme Court have claimed that demonetisation violated several constitutional rights of citizens, such as the right to property (Article 300A), right to equality (Article 14), right to carry on any trade, business or occupation (Article 19) and right to life and right to livelihood (Article 21).