Daijiworld Media Network 

New Delhi, Oct 15: In the current financial year, the Reserve Bank of India has not printed a single Rs 2000 currency note. 

The fact came to light in an RTI reply, which indicates that government may be planning to remove high-value notes from circulation. 

The RTI reply states that 3,542.991 million notes of Rs 2,000 were printed during the financial year 2016-17. The numbers came down to 111.507 million notes in 2017-18 and was further reduced to 46.690 million notes in the year 2018-19.

After unaccounted cash of Rs 6 crore in 2000 note denominations was seized from two bags at Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu border in January this year, an official says that having currency in higher denomination makes it easy for smugglers as well as for those involved in other illegal activities. Hence, printing Rs 2000 notes may have been stopped, as it defeats the very purpose government introduced demonetisation that is to crackdown black money. 

The RBI data revealed gradual reduction in circulation of the Rs 2,000 notes. There were 3,363 million high-value notes in circulation at the end of March 2018 — 3.3% of the total currency in circulation in terms of volume and 37.3% in terms of value. The number was reduced to 3,291 million in FY 2019 — 3% and 31.2% of volume and value, respectively, of the total money in circulation. 

Also, many have been cheated due to fake Rs 2,000 currency. Over Rs 50 crore of fake currency notes have been seized in the past three years, the government had told Lok Sabha in June. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently claimed that “high quality” fake currency notes have resurfaced. India had earlier accused Pakistan’s ISI of printing high quality fake Indian currency notes and channeling them into the Indian market.