MUMBAI: Hundreds of

of rupees that have apparently never been printed have mysteriously made it to the vaults of the

Reserve Bank of India

over the years. Records show that millions of ghost notes – notes that have not been produced at our nation’s mints – are somehow reaching the

RBI

.

A few million will not matter, RBI spokesperson says

TOI: Why is there such a mismatch?

TOI: But the RTI activist only applied to the RBI. The RBI forwarded the application to the presses. Also, this is annual data that TOI has referred to. Even if the data from the previous stock is carried forward, the two figures do not match…There is more supply than the notes printed. Where did the excess notes come from?

TOI: They do not match even if the excess stock is taken into consideration.

TOI: Can the press hold on to currency note stock?

TOI: Then how do you explain the fact that more currency notes have reached the RBI?

Update: A correction — and a question

croresA series of RTI applications reveal that while the mismatch between currency bills printed and transported to the RBI is seen across denominations, it is more pronounced in the case of higher value notes – those of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500.Take the Rs 1,000 notes. The redesigned bill was introduced in October 2000. Ever since, the two authorized mints — Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited, Bangalore, and Currency Note Press , Nashik — have printed a total of 4,452.3 million Rs 1,000 bills. But RBI records show that it has received 4,462 million notes, an excess of 9.7 million notes. That means the RBI has received Rs 970 crore more than what was actually printed."These are not accounts of some fledgling start-up we are referring to. How can the country’s apex bank be indifferent towards this? The facts are startling and I feel that more than one note with the same unique number is being printed," said RTI activist Manoranjan Roy , who sourced the information through the RBI.Roy had applied to the RBI for all relevant data; the bank forwarded his application to the presses for the total count of notes printed. He has now asked President Pranab Mukherjee to intervene and order an inquiry.The apex bank, however, claims there is nothing improper or illicit in this mismatch. Its spokesperson said: "One reason for the difference between the number of notes supplied by printing presses and the numbers provided (to you) by printing presses could be that the printing of notes is a continuous process over years. It is not necessary that all notes printed in any particular year are supplied to RBI in that year itself."The RBI’s contention that printing and transporting notes is a non-stop process and that some of the money may be in transit is at odds with its own rules, which specify that mints cannot keep any stock. In fact, they don’t even have any vaults to hold the money.Also, the number of notes printed by the presses and received by the RBI do not tally even after accounting for the earlier stock. In any case, while the RBI’s argument may make sense if we look at figures for individual years, it cannot explain how the number of notes delivered over the years can exceed the total number of notes ever printed.Between 2000 and 2003, the mints delivered all the 1,000-rupee notes they printed to the RBI. In the next year, only 209 million of the 213 million notes printed were delivered, and in 2004-05, 257 million notes were delivered while 0.3 million notes were shown as being in transit.The puzzle then is: How did the RBI receive a total of 598 million notes when only 591.342m were printed, and 0.3 million were in transit. In value terms, the discrepancy amounts to Rs 668.8 crore. Figures show a similar trend in 2010-11. If notes in transit are taken into account, 3.342 million more notes reached the RBI than were actually produced.The RBI’s response to this: "It may be a big number, but in terms of currency notes, when you are printing hundreds of millions of notes, a difference of a few million will not matter," its spokesperson said.India prints its notes at three government mints in Bangalore, Nashik and Dewas. In case of Rs 500 bills, too, data shows that the RBI gets many more notes than the total count of bills minted. Between 1999-00 and 2010-11, the RBI received 339.95 million more notes than were actually printed.It is surprising the nation’s apex bank has not spotted this anomaly in its own books. Shouldn’t the mystery of the ghost notes be investigated?RBI: You are using one data from one place and another data from another place. You have collected the data of printing from the press and the supply received from the RBI. You cannot do that because there are a lot of logistics involved. Numbers must be compared from the one source; either you take the RBI numbers or the printing presses’ numbers. You cannot mix and match as these are rolling over statistics. Numbers can be at one point in time. (Hypothetically) It could be that on March 31, a few notes were printed, but some are sent on April 1. The difference in notes comes because the notes are probably in transition (and get accounted for in the next year in the books of the RBI).RBI: There is an earlier stock too.RBI: It may be a big number, but in terms of currency notes, when you are printing hundreds of millions of notes, a few million will not matter.RBI: No. They do not have safes.RBI: If you are saying that there are more notes that have been supplied than printed, you check with the presses.In our report dated August 4 on the mismatch in the currency notes printed by the two presses and received by the Reserve Bank of India over nine years, we made an error in the number of currency notes received by the RBI in 2006-07 . In the report, the number of 1000-rupee notes received by the RBI was inadvertently shown as 598 million when it should have been 589 million. (The number of such notes printed that year was correctly reported as 591m.) The error is sincerely regretted.While this closes the difference between what was printed and what was received to a considerable extent, there still remains a discrepancy of about Rs 72 crore for the period in question, which the bank has attributed to “rounding off”.However, there is a large discrepancy between the numbers provided by the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran, RBI’s wholly owned subsidiary, in its response to two similar queries just a month and ahalf apart under the Right to Information Act. A response dated November 10, 2011 to a query indicates the total count of Rs 500 notes printed between 2000-01 and 2009-10 as 10,878m while another response dated December 24, 2011 shows 10,806 m notes were printed—a difference of 72.782m notes valued at over Rs 3,639 crore (see table below).Similarly, there is a difference in the case of currency notes of Rs 1000 denomination. The November response indicates the total number of Rs 1000 notes printed between 2000-01 and 2009-2010 as 3094.69m while the December response places it at 3,085m—a difference of 9.69m notes valued at Rs 969 crore.The aggregate discrepancy—Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes—between the two RTI responses is a significant Rs 4,608 crore. When asked about this, Shailesh Gandhi, India’s previous chief information commissioner said, “How can one printing press give two sets of numbers? There is seriously something wrong over here and it needs to be investigated.”