According to a report in an English daily, an RTI enquiry has led to the shocking discovery that the Reserve Bank of India is missing more than Rs 88,000 crore worth of Rs 500 notes that it should have in its vaults. This sum of money is equivalent to more than 88,000 billion dollars.
A media outlet has published a stunning discovery that resulted from an RTI question. The news reveals that the Reserve Bank of India’s reserves are missing about Rs 88,000 crore worth of Rs 500 notes.
The report from Free Press Journal said that the Right to Information (RTI) request submitted by activist Manoranjan Roy revealed that the government mints in Bengaluru, Nashik, and Dewas printed 881.065 crore notes of the Rs 500 denomination. However, the RBI was only given 726 billion notes, which indicates that they are missing a total of 155.065 billion pieces.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has verified, in response to an earlier RTI request, that it did not receive 210 million pieces of Rs 500 currency notes issued by the Nashik Mint between April 2015 and March 2016.
Currency Note Press in Nashik, Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran (P) Limited in Bengaluru, and the Bank Note Press in Dewas are the three printing presses that are responsible for printing currency notes in India.
In its response to the RTI, the Nashik Mint revealed that it had provided the Reserve Bank with 166.20 crore Rs. 500 notes during the 2016–2017 fiscal year. During the same time period, the Bengaluru Mint was responsible for the distribution of 519.565 crore notes, while the Dewas Mint was responsible for the distribution of 195.30 crore notes.
According to the information obtained through the RTI, the Nashik Mint printed 37,5450,000 new Rs. 500 notes between April 2015 and December 2016, although the Reserve Bank’s records only indicate 34,500,000 of these new notes being produced. During the time that Raghuram Rajan was in charge of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Nashik Mint produced 21 crore of the 176.065 crore worth of missing notes. This occurred between April 2015 and March 2016, when Rajan was the RBI governor.
The RTI activist has forwarded the aforementioned data to the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau and Enforcement Directorate, requesting that they conduct an investigation into the incident.
The Reserve Bank of India has not yet provided a formal response to these findings. Nevertheless, this disparity in currency values is not the first time anything like this has occurred. It is interesting to note that the same RTI activist brought a public interest litigation before the Bombay High Court in 2015, saying that the data supplied by printing presses and the Reserve Bank of India between the years 2000 and 2011 did not line up.
During that time period, the printing presses reported that they had submitted 19,45,40,00,000 pieces of Rs 500 denomination to the RBI. However, the RBI reported that they had received only 18,98,46,84,000 pieces, which resulted in a shortage of 46,93,16,000 pieces, which is equivalent to Rs 23,465 crore.
In addition, the printing presses sent 4,44,13,00,000 pieces of Rs 1,000 denomination, while the RBI claimed to have received 4,45,30,00,000 pieces. This resulted in an excess of 1,17,00,000 pieces, which is equal to Rs 1,170,000 in financial value.
The court decided on August 23 that the petition that was submitted in 2016 was groundless and dismissed it. On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement that the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 denominations of currency would be demonetized. This occurred three months later.