Hoarding of new currency partly responsible for note crisis in some states

New Delhi: The recovery of large amount of new currency notes from a few individuals in some southern cities confirms the doubt in some government and non-government circles that attempts by some people to hoard them is a major cause of cash shortage in bank branches and Automatic Teller Machines (ATM). The fear that it may be just a tip of the iceberg has caused additional worry to the government and the common men .

While posing a serious challenge to the Income Tax and other authorities, these incidents nail the opposition propaganda that the government was ill-prepared and that it is solely responsible for the cash crunch . Clearly, the crisis is partly man-made.

The development raises a question mark over the role of some bank employees whose integrity seems to be doubtful. Some banks have already ordered inquiry against their officials. Some other disclosures may be also made and some more skeletons may tumble out from the cupboards.

The government has itself admitted that it is an enormous task, to replace 86 per cent of currency notes which were of high values and which were in circulation before ban, that too at a short period of time. It may become more difficult if some people hoard the new notes.

So far new notes of Rs 2000 totalling over Rs four crores have been seized. The total has gone up to Rs six crores by adding seized old notes which were banned. Four persons, two engineers and two contractors, have been identified in this connection. The engineers were government employees and contractors were registered with the government.

These seizure's were made following raids at three places, Bengaluru, Chenai and Erode during last two days. Gold and jewelleries were seized in addition to currency notes. The official team which raided their hide-outs have identified additional ten persons who may be hoarding new notes.

When contacted ,a finance department official said on Friday that it is difficult to give a precise time and date by which the cash supply situation will be normal. " Printing of currency notes is time consuming because of safety condition. We are doing whatever is possible to do in this connection", he assured.

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