According to media reports, some Rs 10 notes printed and issued by the Reserve Bank of India in the recent past do not have Mahatma Gandhi's portrait on them.
Notes with Mahatma Gandhi's portrait were printed and issued by the RBI after 1996. Since then, all the notes printed have his picture on the front side of the note.
All the bank notes carry Mahatma Gandhi's water mark and portrait on the front side. Before 1996, they carried the symbol of lion mark capital of Ashoka pillar. Now the Ashoka pillar has been shifted to the left side of the notes.
According to media reports, some of the Rs 10 notes which have come to hand only have the Ashoka pillar on them.
Venkateswara Rao, a businessman told a prominent newspaper that he had received one such note from a shopper in an exhibition.
He said, “I obviously grew suspicious upon seeing note without Gandhi's image.”
He then took the note to the local State Bank of India branch. The officials of the bank said that it was an original note.
“The note bears the pin marks indicating that it came out from a pinned currency bundle issued by a nationalized bank,” Rao said to the news daily.
An RBI official in Hyderabad on the other hand claimed ignorance about these new bank notes.
“The Rs 10 note is in a continuous production since the RBI first took over the functions of controlling the currency. The notes you are referring to could belong to the earlier period,” he added.
Reports say that the notes in the Gandhi series and the ones without his portrait have the same appearance and design otherwise.
