The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday released a statement which revealed its plans of issuing a new Rs 100 note without inset letter in both numbering panels. The statement, however, said that the old Rs 100 notes would not go invalid and continue as the legal tender. It was earlier speculated that the Reserve Bank was about to come up with new Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes. However, nothing had been confirmed then. The Reserve Bank of India recently released the new Rs 500 and the high denomination Rs 2000 notes following the announcement of demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The volume of bank notes that are printed in India is huge which makes it necessary for the use of an inset number, which in this case are alphabets. The inset is a capital letter that appears on the number panel. It is known that there are 4 different currency printing presses across the country. Each of the four currency presses is allotted a separate set of inset letters for their internal identification purposes. The RBI does not disclose the inset numbers/letters that ard allotted to each printing press for security reasons. As in the case of the prefix, only twenty alphabets are used as insets. The alphabets that are excluded are I, J, O, X, Y, Z.
However, unlike the old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, the old Rs 100 notes would still remain in circulation, RBI said in an official statement. The date of its release, however, is yet to be announced by the RBI. Following the demonetisation. The Indian economy is currently going through a massive change with the demonetisation move driving it towards being cashless. However, considering that much of the Indian population still doesn’t possess a smartphone or have access to the internet, it would be unwise to run towards a form of economy that could be out of the reach of the masses.
