Delhi High Court has issued notices to the Central government, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Google India Digital Services Private Limited and others on a petition seeking suspension of Google Pay UPI for alleged wilful non-compliance of directives.
A bench of Justice Asha Menon on Thursday asked the RBI, Centre and others to file a reply to the petition.
Advocates Ramesh Babu and Ripu Daman Bhardwaj accepted notices on behalf of the RBI and Union of India respectively. Akhil Anand, advocate for Google India Digital Services Private Limited accepted the notice and sought three weeks' time to file a response to the petition.
The high court said that the response to the petition be filed by the counsel representing the respective respondents within three weeks with advance copies to counsel for the petitioner, who may file rejoinders, if any, within 10 days thereafter.
The court was hearing a petition, filed by Shubham Kapaley through advocates Abhimanyu Mahajan, Sneha Jain and Diksha Thakre, seeking direction to the Centre and RBI to immediately take action against Google India Digital Services Private Limited.
The plea sought to initiate proper punitive action against the app for its "wilful and continued non-compliance" of directions of the RBI and Centre. It also sought to impose a hefty penalty amounting to at least 10 times revenue of Google Pay, since start of its operations in India to be contributed towards COVID-19 Relief Fund in India.
It also sought to immediately suspend operations of the respondent in UPI through its app "Google Pay" till it completely complies with interoperability.
The petitioner has sought direction to conduct a thorough third party and independent investigation of Google Pay app to check compliance of every directive, guidelines issued by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the RBI.
Kapaley also sought to suspend its operations and not expand its user base until a thorough independent third party audit by CERT-IN or any other reputed third party app of the Google Pay App is conducted and certified by the RBI and Centre.
( With inputs from ANI )