The Reserve Bank of India on Friday announced that people can exchange their old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at the counters of the central bank only. The limit for exchange has been capped at Rs 2,000 per person per exchange. However, while announcing the demonetisation decision on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set the exchange limit at Rs 4,000 till November 24, and said that it would be increased from November 25 to December 30.
This comes a day after the Centre said that no over-the-counter exchange of demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be allowed from the midnight of November 24. The government said the decision was taken because of the “declining trend” in the over-the-counter exchange of scrapped currency.
Besides, payments for transactions in exempted categories will now be accepted only through demonetised Rs 500 notes till December 15, reported NDTV. These include transactions at government hospitals, fuel bunks and toll booths on national highways. However, the government has suspended toll collection on all national highways till December 2.
Other exempted categories include government school/college fees of up to Rs 2,000 and prepaid mobile top-ups upto Rs 500. Besides, one can use the scrapped currency to make purchases of maximum Rs 5,000 at a time from consumer cooperative stores and pay their current and arrears for water and electricity bills. Also, citizens of other countries will be permitted to exchange foreign currency up to Rs 5,000 per week, with each exchange being noted in their passports.
There were media reports that the RBI ha distributed Rs 42 lakh to a bank which has 4,000 customers and Rs 3 lakh to a bank with 1.5 lakh customer base. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal raised questions on RBI’s way of distributing currency to banks.
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