Rs 88,000 crores  missing from the country’s economy- information received under the Right to Information Act

Abhijit Ray, Kolkata:About Rs 88,000 crore is missing from the country’s economy. All in new Rs 500 notes. The information received under the Right to Information Act has created a ruckus throughout the day on Saturday. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tried to cover up the controversy by issuing a statement last night saying it is not “true news”. Within 24 hours, discrepancies were again exposed over the number of notes. Courtesy RTI. However, this time, there is no shortage, but instead of depositing an additional Rs 2,000 notes in the reserve bank’s reserves. The notes were not printed in the mint.Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in November 2016 to fight fake currency. Instead, new notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 were introduced in the market. Manoranjan Roy, a Resident of Medinipur, had sought to know through RTI how much Rs 2,000 notes were printed in that financial year i.e. 2016-17. In response, the Reserve Bank of India Note Printing Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru said it had printed Rs 350.36 crore worth of Rs 2,000 notes.It cost Rs 3.54 to print each note. But according to the RBI’s annual report, it received Rs 350.40 crore worth of Rs 2,000 notes in the current fiscal. In other words, an additional Rs 4,02,000 notes have entered the apex bank’s locker. In terms of money, it’s 80 crores. It doesn’t end there. It is learnt that the RBI had ordered printing of Rs 350.02 crore notes in that fiscal. But it printed more than that. And the RBI got more than that!What is mysterious is that there is no discrepancy in the reports of the MINT AND RBI in the next two financial years. In 2017-18 and 2018-19, the RBI had printed rs 15.10 crore and Rs 4.7 crore respectively. So did he. So why only in the year of demonetisation? This question has been raised in the reply received from the RTI. He claimed that the RBI did not respond to a request for information on the reason for the discrepancy. So he has written to the Prime Minister and the CBI on the matter.The RBI stopped printing Rs 2,000 notes in 2016-17 after three years. In 2019-20. According to informed sources, the Prime Minister’s Rs 2,000 note has not been effective. During demonetisation, the aamaadmi was sweating it out. Later, the note was in the market, but it did not get much popularity. Instead, people wanted to get it out of their necks. The result? The RBI has already issued guidelines for depositing these large amounts of notes in banks. Now those 2,000 notes are at the centre of the numbers mess and scam!