Senior RBI officials admitted to The Quint that “the reckless speed to fill the currency vacuum” created by the demonetisation of the Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes – which accounted for 86 percent of the total currency notes in circulation before the ban – is what caused the printing of the defective notes.

The Quint has previously published a series of reports on how vital stages of the printing of both the Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes were done away with in the “massive rush” post-demonetisation.

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However, once the defects were detected and brought to the notice of the RBI, two teams of officials from the central bank and the SPMCIL, the latter led by Finance Ministry Joint Secretary (Currency and Coinage) Pravin Garg, visited the Bank Note Press in Dewas (Madhya Pradesh) and the Currency Note Press at Nashik (Maharashtra) to take stock of the total volume of defective Rs 500 notes. The RBI team visited the Dewas and Nashik printing presses on 17 November.