It’s not only the ₹2,000 notes that have been counterfeited, over 12,000 pieces of fake ₹500 notes have been seized after demonetisation in 17 border States, according to the information provided by the Home Ministry to the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said he could not confirm whether the security features of the new currency notes could never be copied. The maximum number of fake notes was recovered in Gujarat and West Bengal, but they were of “low quality and low grade.”
After November 8 last year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the scrapping of ₹1,000 and ₹500 notes, 40,905 fake notes in the denomination of ₹2,000 and ₹500 have been seized by the Border Security Force, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the police in the 17 border States. The face value of these fake notes is ₹6.2 crore.
During the question hour in the Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma said seven of the eleven security features of the ₹2,000 notes were copied, and there was a fear that the remaining four would also be copied.
To this, Mr. Rijiju said: “I have stated earlier too that some of the security features may be copied. But if the features are multiple, copying of all cannot be easily done. It is indigenously designed and has multiple security features. Some of the features are very difficult to copy. Ink and other things are available only to limited countries and limited companies and will not be available to private organisations easily. How can I confirm that not a single feature can be copied?”
In a written statement, Mr. Rijiju said the BSF seized 378 pieces of fake ₹2,000 notes, with a face value of ₹7.5 lakh from West Bengal and Assam along the Bangladesh border. Of these, 230 pieces were seized in Assam. The NIA seized fake ₹2,000 notes with a face value of ₹4.5 crore. These included 22,479 notes from Gujarat and 198 from West Bengal. The police seized fake ₹2,000 and ₹500 notes with a face value of ₹1.2 crore in Gujarat, ₹23 lakh in West Bengal and ₹44 lakh in Punjab.
Mr. Rijiju said the government was taking steps to help the people identify fake notes, which were mostly “photocopies” of the original.
As reported by The Hindu earlier, the covert security features in the currency notes ₹2,000 and ₹500 notes have not been changed since 2005.
