NIA Warns Of Fake Currency From Pakistan While No Rs 2000 Notes Were Printed This Year. Was Demonetisation Ineffective?
The move to print fewer Rs 2,000 notes is seen as an attempt to prevent hoarding of the high-value currency and curb black money, experts said.
The Reserve Bank of India has admitted that it has stopped printing Rs 2,000 currency notes. The disclosure was made by The New Indian Express in a report that cited a RTI response.
As per the report, the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran has not printed a single Rs 2,000 note this financial year while 3,542.991 million notes of Rs 2,000 were printed during the 2016-¡¯17 financial year, the RBI said.
However, it came down substantially to 111.507 million notes in the following year. Then in 2018-¡¯19, 46.690 million notes were printed.
The move to print fewer Rs 2,000 notes is seen as an attempt to prevent hoarding of the high-value currency and curb black money, experts said.
The Union government had informed the Lok Sabha earlier this year that over Rs 50 crore in fake currency notes have been seized in the past three years. Further, according to the annual report of RBI, there has been a significant increase in fake Rs 2,000 currency notes in the 2017-¡¯18 financial year.
RBI said 17,929 fake Rs 2,000 notes were detected in 2017-¡¯18 while only 638 fake notes of the same denomination had been detected the year before.
The Rs 2,000 notes came into being in November 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government demonetised high value currency notes. Among other things it was aimed to bring down the scale of fake notes in the system.
The sudden move that had brought the nation down to its knees, and which was later described by the then Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian as a ¡°draconian shock that hurt GDP growth¡±, was widely publicised by the ruling government as a move to curb the circulation of fake notes.
However, this report of the RBI not printing any Rs 2,000 notes this year surfaced at a time when the National Investigation Agency has said that ¡°high quality¡± fake currency notes have resurfaced.
According to The Hindu, NIA Inspector General Alok Mittal shared a presentation on Monday where he accused Pakistan of being the main source of printing high quality fake Indian currency notes.
More instances:
Karnataka: Police seized fake Indian currency notes with the face value of Rs 7 crore in Belagavi; One person arrested, case registered pic.twitter.com/chSueohEjr
¡ª ANI (@ANI) April 18, 2018
#WestBengal: Murshidabad police busted a gang dealing in fake currency and recovered FICN worth Rs 5,96,000 in Rs 2000 notes, three arrested pic.twitter.com/NEicZLUcZ5
¡ª ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2017
Nepal: Kingpin of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) Yunus Ansari & 5 others, including 3 Pak nationals, have been sent to jail by Kathmandu Dist Court. They were arrested on 24 May from Tribhuvan Int'l Airport in Kathmandu, FICN with face value of Rs 7.67 Crore were recovered. pic.twitter.com/barB7Wyrhb
¡ª ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2019
West Bengal: Border Security Force (BSF) apprehended two persons with Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) from Malda's Gulapgunj market, recovered 325 notes with face value of Rs 6,50,000 in Rs 2,000 denomination notes pic.twitter.com/Dx9NtcOobz
¡ª ANI (@ANI) December 31, 2017
Coimbatore: Police seized huge quantity of fake Indian currency notes of Rs 2000 denomination; Printing machine, laptop, in and white paper also seized, one person arrested pic.twitter.com/048goMjG02
¡ª ANI (@ANI) June 2, 2018
Chandigarh: One arrested by Haryana Police in possession of Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) with the face value of Rs 24.60 lakh, on August 30. Accused identified as Rohit alias Raman, a resident of Haryana's Hisar. Case registered. Investigation underway pic.twitter.com/DXEglmCIdN
¡ª ANI (@ANI) August 30, 2019
Nepal Police arrested 4 Pakistanis and 2 Nepalis in possession of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu earlier today. pic.twitter.com/fLNTkZyaXJ
¡ª ANI (@ANI) May 24, 2019
The obvious question then is what purpose did demonetisation, which caused widespread problems and anger, serve?
