Demonetisation day 26: Now, new Rs 50, Rs 20 notes, but no exchange needed
Adding to the already existing list of announcements that come under the 'demonetisation chapter' of the Indian economy, the RBI issued a new set of press releases about Rs 20 and Rs 50 notes.
However, existing notes of these denominations need not be exchanged, and will continue to be legal tender.
The two press releases on the Reserve Bank of India website read:
The Reserve Bank of India will shortly issue ₹ 50 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi Series-2005, without inset letter in both the number panels, bearing signature of Dr. Urjit R Patel, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, and the year of printing '2016' printed on the reverse of the banknote.
The Reserve Bank of India will shortly issue ₹ 20 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi Series-2005, with inset letter ‘L’ in both the number panels, bearing signature of Dr. Urjit R Patel, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, and the year of printing '2016' printed on the reverse of the banknote.
The design and security features of these banknotes will be similar to the banknotes of ₹ 50 denomination with the ascending font of numerals in both the number panels and without intaglio print issued earlier in Mahatma Gandhi Series- 2005.
Both the press releases also clarified that all the banknotes in the denomination of ₹ 50 and ₹ 20 issued by the RBI in the past will continue to be legal tender.
Know more about Inset letter "L":
The volume of banknotes printed in India are huge because of which the use of inset arises to keep a tab on the production process. In the case of Indian banknotes, insets are nothing but upper case alphabets.
This inset is a capital letter and appears on the number panel just before the serial number of the note.
There are four different currency press that print notes for the Reserve Bank of India . Each of the four currency printers are allotted a separate set of inset letters for their internal identification purposes.
As in the case of the prefix, only twenty alphabets are used as insets. The alphabets I, J, O, X, Y, Z are excluded so as to prevent confusion with numerals.