RBI needs machines to spot fake ones among scrapped notes

The Reserve Bank of India, which is still counting the scrapped notes left with it, has not been able to segregate the fake ones from the pile of old Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes and is now in the process of reported to be hiring 12 currency verification systems to speed up the work.

RBI had, in May, floated a global tender for leasing of 18 Currency Verification and Processing System (CVPS), but cancelled it later.

It is now reported to have floated a fresh tender for leasing 12 such systems, to help it identify the fake ones from the huge pile of old Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes which were scrapped following the 9 November 2016 demonetisation.

RBI has sought a minimum speed of 30 notes per second for processing these notes received at the regional offices of the RBI, as per the tender document.

The term of the lease contract will be six months, extendable by three blocks of two months each.

RBI had so far failed to reveal the exact amount of scrapped notes collected as deposits by banks and post offices across the country. Governor Urjit Patel had told a parliamentary panel on 12 July that banned notes were still being counted that he was not in a position to give the exact figure on the scrapped currency that is back in the system.

Patel did not provide any "specific number" on the amount of money that had been deposited post-demonetisation.

According to the finance, there were 17.165 billion Rs500 notes and 6.858 billion Rs1,000 notes in circulation as of 8 November 2016, the day demonetisation was announced