Skip to main content

RBI Governor allays currency note fears

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday sought to quell fears over the decision
to withdraw all pre-2005 currency notes from April 1, 2014, saying the RBI notification was not aimed at demonetisation. Assuring the people that such currency notes would continue to be legal tender, Dr. Rajan said there was no cause for panic. The public would be required to approach banks for exchanging their pre-2005 notes. The RBI on Wednesday said that after March 31 it would withdraw from circulation all currency notes issued prior to 2005.
“This is not an attempt to demonetise such currency notes. It is only that the pre-2005 currency notes can be easily forged, while the new currency notes being printed now have more security features,” Dr. Rajan said answering questions after delivering the 8th R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture of the Research and Analysis Wing.
“I understand people are coming up with different interpretations. The public will not be subject to any hardship on account of this decision. I have to say that this decision has nothing to do with the elections. That is not the objective,” he said.
Dr. Rajan was responding to a question by Central Bureau of Investigation Director Ranjit Sinha, who asked him about the implication of the RBI order.
Mr. Rajan said the move to replace the less effective currency notes with those having better security features was on the suggestion of the Finance Ministry. The BJP, however, called the move “anti-poor.” “The latest gimmick of the Finance Ministry is an attempt to obfuscate the issue of black money stashed away outside the country. The aam aurats and aadmis , those who are illiterate and have no access to banking facilities will be hit,” BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...