Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: For the third time, the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday extended the deadline for exchanging pre-2005 currency note by six months to December 31, 2015.
With less than a week left for the last day to exchange all pre-2005 currency notes, including those of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations, the RBI extended the deadline from June 30 to December 31.
In January of 2014, the RBI had announced that it had decided to withdraw all currency notes issued prior to 2005 after March 31, 2014 in a move apparently aimed at curbing black money and fake currencies.
However, this was extended to January 1, 2015.
Again, on December 23, 2014, the central bank announced that it was extending the deadline by six months to June 30, 2015.
All pre-2005 notes continue to remain a legal tender.
These notes can be exchanged for their full value at bank branches.
It is easy to identify pre-2005 notes. The currency notes issued before 2005 do not have the year of printing on the reverse side. In notes issued post 2005, the year of printing is visible at the bottom on the reverse.
The rationale behind the move to withdraw banknotes printed prior to 2005 is to remove them from the market because they have fewer security features compared with banknotes printed after 2005, RBI said.
It is standard international practice to withdraw old series notes.
Post-2005 notes have added security features and help in curbing the menace of fake currency.
Over 164 crore pre-2005 currency notes of various denominations, including of Rs 1,000 were shredded in regional offices of Reserve Bank in 13-month period ending January.
The face value of the shredded currency notes was around Rs 21,750 crore. As per the details given in Parliament in March, 86.87 crore pieces of Rs 100, 56.19 crore pieces of Rs 500 and 21.75 crore pieces of Rs 1,000 were shredded.
With PTI Inputs
