First, the 500 notes had a misprint that made people doubt their authenticity, now two thousand notes have emerged with misprints, that are valid and in circulation. The shortage of cash has claimed many victims over the past two months. The most recent victim for this situation is Gandhiji himself! A new batch of notes that came into circulation in Madhya Pradesh are without Bapuji on them and are not fake. This incident came to light after a few farmers of Madhya Pradesh received these notes from banks.
The farmers were flabbergasted by seeing the lack of Gandhiji on the notes and thought that these were counterfeit notes. But the bank confirmed that these were genuine and said that it might be a ‘printing mistake’ that caused this abnormality. It also came to light that there were many such notes in circulation that have printing mistakes. After being notified the State Bank of India where the farmers collected these notes took them back. These notes were printed at the Bank Note press in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. It is assumed that haste in printing notes and overworking printing press offices might have caused this problem.
Sheopur (Madhya Pradesh): Farmer receives Rs 2000 notes from SBI Bank without Mahatma Gandhi’s image pic.twitter.com/To8yiFIFxq
— ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2017
The currency printing presses have been working around the clock, so as to produce a year’s worth of circulation in just five months and reach the target. There are four different presses in the country that print notes. Located at Mysuru, Salboni, Dewas and Nashik, they have to meet the limit required for the nation to bring the currency back.
Mysore and Salboni were the printing press that had printing lines and was printing a bulk of Rs.500 and Rs. 1000 notes before Demonetisation. Dewas and Nashik had old printing machines, hence printed only Rs.100, Rs. 50, Rs. 20, Rs.10, Rs .5 and Rs. 2 notes. As new machines have been imported, the Dewas printing press is trying to meet the margins by printing a bulk of Rs. 500 notes.
The RBI’s goal of printing 5.7 billion Rs. 500 notes for 2017 and 2.2 billion Rs. 2000 notes in five months has over stressed the printing presses. The limit previously was the same amount of notes for 12 months, but to reach this in five months the presses have been working day and night. This has led to errors in the printing of the notes.
