An RTI query has revealed that the Reserve Bank of India has no appropriate data on how many fake notes were received by the bank after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.
This came after a renowned social activist Anil.V. Galgali filed an RTI to understand how many fake currencies were detected after the note ban. The RBI’s Department of Currency Management (Forged Note Vigilance Division), responded saying that they no confirmed data on this particular query.
The activist in his query, had asked the RBI to reveals the details of the fake currencies they have received since the government scrapped away the higher currency denomination notes from November 8 to December 10. He further urged them to also provide the bank names and the dates the received the money.
“The RBI has made it clear that nearly 11 weeks later, it has simply no data available on this crucial aspect. So the government’s claims to demonetise as a weapon to kill fake currency is proving hollow,” Galgali told IANS.
“The RBI’s replies make it obvious that the government has failed in this endeavour or raised the bogey of fake currencies merely to implement demonetisation. It’ss now up to the PM to declare the figure/value of counterfeit notes recovered, in the national interest,” Galgali added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earlier claimed that the demonetisation drive was a measure to taken to deal with the black money menace and that would also help in stopping fake currency smuggling. However, the banks could not provide any appropriate answer on how successful was it to actually kill fake currency menace.
RBI had also recently claimed that he also had no idea how much money had been printed since the note ban. This also came in response to an RTI filed by Mumbai-based activist Anil Galgali.
