It is now official. The Reserve Bank of India has officially said it has stopped printing Rs 2000 currency. There was no printing of the currency this financial year at all, the RBI said in an RTI response. The central bank had printed 3,542.991 million notes in the financial year 2016-17, which came down to 111.507 million notes in 2017-18 and was further reduced to 46.690 million notes in the year 2018-19, the response to RTI filed by The New Indian Express said. Finance ministry officials are stating that the high circulation of Rs 2000 notes might defeat the government’s objectives as it is easier to smuggle the high-denomination notes. Earlier there were reports that printing of Rs 2000 notes have been stopped but the government had denied the same. There are reports that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said ‘high quality’ fake currency notes have resurfaced, with Pakistan being the main source.
