Another day, another new notification from the government and the Reserve Bank of India.
With 11 days to go until the deadline to deposit older Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the RBI on Monday added a new rule: You now only have one chance to deposit an amount of more than Rs 5000 before December 30 in older notes. And even that one time you still have to explain to two bank officials about why you didn’t put your money in earlier.
The Finance Ministry published a gazette notification dated December 17 amending the demonetisation rules to account for the new restrictions on deposits. On Monday, the RBI put out a circular explaining exactly how this will work:
Tenders of SBNs [Specified Bank Notes – referring here to older Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes] in excess of ₹5000 into a bank account will be received for credit only once during the remaining period till December 30, 2016. The credit in such cases shall be afforded only after questioning tenderer, on record, in the presence of at least two officials of the bank, as to why this could not be deposited earlier and receiving a satisfactory explanation. The explanation should be kept on record to facilitate an audit trail at a later stage. An appropriate flag also should be raised in CBS to that effect so that no more tenders are allowed.
In other words, between now and the deadline to deposit your older notes, you can put in a value of more than Rs 5,000 only once. And while doing it, you will have to explain, on record, to at last two officials of the bank why you could not deposit earlier. This explanation will be saved. And a note will be added in the banking system preventing you from trying to deposit again.
And no, you can’t get around this by going over and over with amounts of less than Rs 5,000. The RBI circular adds that if deposits of less than Rs 5,000 add up to more than that amount, bank officials are free to quiz you until they get a satisfactory explanation. For accounts that haven’t been certified under Know Your Customer norms, there’s also an upper limit of Rs 50,000 for that single transaction.
What counts as a satisfactory explanation? The circular doesn’t say. Which means this will be at the discretion of the banking officials who you are supposed to explain yourself to. Will long lines be a satisfactory answer? Can people take printouts of tweets, like the one below, of ministers asking people not to go to banks because they have time until December 30 to deposit as a satisfactory response?
It is also somewhat unclear what happens in case of an unsatisfactory explanation. What is implied in the circular is that the RBI would like that money to go into the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, an amnesty scheme for black money holders that allows them to declare undisclosed income subject to a 50% charge in taxes and penalties.
Indeed, the RBI’s circular spells out the fact that this is the aim of the notification, to ensure that people end up actually putting money into that scheme.
On a review of the provisions ii, iii and iv at C of Para 3 dealing with credit of the value of SBNs into bank accounts it has been decided to place certain restrictions on deposits of SBNs into bank accounts while encouraging the deposits of the same under the Taxation and Investment Regime for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, 2016.
As expected, only-once-until-December-30 rule does not apply to deposits under the Garib Kalyan Yojana.
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