The Tribune: New Delhi: Monday, July 09, 2018.
Over Rs 29.41
crore was spent on using the Indian Air Force’s ultra-modern transport aircraft
the C-17 and the C-130J Super Hercules to ferry newly issued Rs 2,000 and Rs
500 currency notes post-demonetisation, according to an RTI reply.
The move to
scrap old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was announced by Prime Minister Narendra
Modi on November 8, 2016, that saw 86 per cent of the currency being sucked out
of the system, needing an urgent operation to replenish it with new Rs 2,000
and Rs 500 notes issued after demonetisation.
According to
the response provided by the IAF, its frontline transport aircraft, the C-17
and the C-130J Super Hercules, undertook 91 sorties to transport bundles of
currency from security printing presses and mints to various destinations
across the country after demonetisation.
As on
November 8, 2016, there were 1,716.5 crore pieces of Rs 500 and 685.8 crore
pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation, totalling Rs 15.44 lakh crore, about
86 per cent of the total currency in circulation, according to RBI and
government data.
In its RTI
response to Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), the IAF said it billed the
government-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India and the
Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited to the tune of Rs 29.41
crore for its services.
“I am of the
opinion that the government should have avoided using defence assets and
instead could have easily requisitioned the services of civil transport
aircraft,” Batra said.
This
situation could have been avoided, had the government fully prepared itself
before making the announcement to demonetise currency notes, he said.
Post-demonetisation,
the RBI had spent Rs 7,965 crore in 2016-17 on printing new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000
notes, and those of other denomination, more than double the Rs 3,421 crore it
had spent in the previous year.
The
demonetisation was hailed as a step that would curb black money, corruption and
check counterfeit currency, but the RBI, in its annual report for 2017, had
said just 7.1 pieces of Rs 500 note per million in circulation and 19.1 pieces
of Rs 1,000 notes per million in circulation were found to be fake in its
sample survey. — PTI