Nine New Security Features in Currency Notes

In a bid to tackle menace of the increasing fake Indian currency notes coming in the market, the Government has decided to introduce nine new security features in the new series to make the counterfeiting well neigh impossible These features are sought to be incorporated in the notes through five sets of materials, three sets of software and processes and a specific micro- perforation machinery for producing them. The new notes will have some or all of these features.

They are all detailed in a notification on " global request for qualification (RFQ) issued by the Finance Ministry on Tuesday inviting applications from those capable of providing the security features and associated technology. This is in continuation of an earlier RFI invite to firms on September 10 as their documents helped the government to firm up the security features fir incorporation in all or any denomination of the Indian bank notes.

It says that the estimated annual requirement of the currency notes is 18 billions a year, half of them in the denomination of Rs 10, 20 and 50 and rest of Rs 100, 500 and 1000. Only firms having the annual capacity of not less than 2 billion pieces are to be entertained.

Interestingly, the notification goofs up saying the applications should reach the under- secretary in the Directorate of Currency by 1300 hrs on July 17, while RFQ envelopes are sought to be superscribed as "RFQ due on January 15, 2001." Though the specifications provided in the notification may come handy to the counterfeiters to push fake notes with same type of specifications, a finance ministry official says these cannot be kept under wraps as otherwise the public will not be able to differentiate between the genuine and fake notes.

While the finance ministry has no estimates of the fake notes already in circulation in the market, the official said the extent of the menace can be judged from the fact that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) got into its system the forged bank notes worth Rs 30 lakhs in the past two months. This is besides the counterfeit notes seized by police.

Banks seize these notes when they are presented on their counters and send them to the RBI that in turn files a case every month or sometimes every two months with the Parliament Street Police Station here giving details of the fakes seized and destroyed.