MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank said as much as 97.82 percent of the Rs 2000 denomination banknotes, which were withdrawn from circulation on May 19, 2023, have come back to the system. The value of these currency notes that are yet to return to the system is Rs 7,755 crore as of May 31.
As of May 19, 2023, the total value of the Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation was Rs 3.56 lakh crore.
The monetary authority hurriedly introduced the Rs 2000 notes after the infamous note ban that the Modi government announced on May 8, 2016 with the first stated objective of eliminating black money and then ending up a means to push digital payments. The announcement saw the government cancelling the legal tender of the Rs 1000 and 500 notes which had then constituted almost 87 percent of the currency in circulation.
The role of cash in the system has more than doubled since then—from around Rs 17 trillion as of November 8, 2016 to over Rs 34 trillion as of March 2024.
The unplanned move led to massive public hardships and deaths of over 100 people while waiting in queues at bank counters to deposit the banned notes.
In a statement Monday, the RBI said with only Rs 7,755 crore yet to be returned to the system as of May 31, the total value of Rs 2000 banknotes that have come back to the system stands at 97.82 percent of what was in circulation as on May 19, 2023.
The monetary authority has been periodically publishing the status of the withdrawal of the 2000 banknotes and has done so thrice since then with the last one being published on May 2, 2024.
After it asked all bank branches to accept these notes for return up to October 7, 2023, it opened special counters for deposit and/or exchange of these banknotes at select branches. The facility for exchange was made available at the 19 issue offices of the Reserve Bank since May 19, 2023. It also allowed the public to send these banknotes through India Post to any of the issue offices for credit to their bank accounts.
These banknotes continue to be legal tender, the regulator reiterated.
The 19 issue offices of the RBI are at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Belapur (Navi Mumbai), Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Patna and Thiruvananthapuram.