Dewas press prints notes with ex-RBI governor D Subbarao's signature

NEW DELHI: You would normally expect the bank note press to know who the RBI governor is. But, it has now emerged that at least one of the press continued printing currency notes bearing D Subbarao's signature even in February 2014, although Raghuram Rajan had taken over in September 2013.

If the norms had been followed, all notes printed from January 2014 should have come with Rajan's signature — something that the Bank Note Press Dewas failed to do and went ahead and printed as many as 372 million pieces of currency notes from January to February 25. In fact, a recent report by the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has revealed that it remitted 146 million pieces to RBI's regional offices, which asked the press not to send notes with the former governor's signature. As a result, it is now saddled with over 226 million (22.6 crore) pieces of bank notes of Rs 20, Rs 100 and Rs 500, which cost close to Rs 37 crore.

Although Bank Note Press Dewas has maintained that the notes have not been rejected and that they would be dispatched as soon as RBI issued instructions, the CAG has noted that there was a "very remote" possibility.

Going by the auditor's account, the Dewas press did not follow instructions. On September 14, 2013, 10 days after Rajan took charge, the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt Ltd — the agency for issuing designs and printing places — had issued a specimen note of Rs 10 with the new governor's signature and asked the press in Dewas as well as Nashik to collect security material to begin printing. A month later, it also informed the press about the approval for "machine proof" of Rs 50, Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes with Rajan's signature. The norm is to put the new governor's signature on notes that are printed from January.

While the Nashik press followed instructions, Dewas somehow got it wrong and it woke up to the mistake only after RBI offices rejected the new notes with the previous governor's signature.