Indian Economy Quiz: Indian Currency: Notes, Coins, Mints and Demonetisation

Section 22 of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 confers on the Reserve Bank the sole right to issue banknotes in India, and the Issue Department of the Bank keeps this function separate from its banking business.

The one rupee note is issued by the Government of India under the Coinage Act and carries the signature of the Finance Secretary, while every other denomination is a banknote issued by the Reserve Bank under Section 22 of its Act and carries the signature of the Governor.

Section 24 of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 permits banknotes of denominations up to ten thousand rupees, so a note of a higher value would need an amendment of the Act by Parliament.

An amendment of the Reserve Bank of India Act in 1956 replaced the proportional reserve system with the Minimum Reserve System, under which the Bank must hold assets worth two hundred crore rupees against the note issue, of which gold must be not less than one hundred fifteen crore rupees…

The mint of an Indian coin can be read from the small mark placed below the year of minting, and a five-pointed star stands for the Hyderabad mint.

Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited was set up in 1995 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank and runs the two banknote presses at Mysuru in Karnataka and Salboni in West Bengal.

The rupee symbol was adopted by the Union Cabinet on 15 July 2010 after a public competition, and the winning design by D. Udaya Kumar, then a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, joins the Devanagari letter ra with the Roman capital R and carries two parallel…

The High Denomination Bank Notes (Demonetisation) Act was passed in January 1978, when the Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai was in office, and it withdrew the notes of one thousand, five thousand and ten thousand rupees that had been reintroduced in 1954.

The notes of five hundred and one thousand rupees in the Mahatma Gandhi series ceased to be legal tender from the midnight of 8 November 2016, the stated purposes being action against unaccounted money, counterfeit currency and the financing of terrorism; a new five hundred rupee note and a two…

On 19 May 2023 the Reserve Bank announced the withdrawal of the two thousand rupee note from circulation under its Clean Note Policy and asked banks to stop issuing it, while making it clear that the note was not being demonetised and would remain legal tender; holders were given a…

Every banknote above one rupee is issued by the Reserve Bank under Section 22 of its Act and carries the promise to pay the bearer, signed by the Governor, which is why these notes are called promissory notes of the Bank.

Decimal coinage came into force on 1 April 1957 under the Indian Coinage Amendment Act, and the rupee, which had earlier been divided into sixteen annas, each of four pice or twelve pies, was divided into one hundred paise; the new coin was called the naya paisa until 1964, when…