NEW DELHI: About 2.08 per cent or Rs 7,409 crore of the withdrawn Rs 2,000 banknotes have not yet been returned to the RBI, about ten months after the deadline to deposit or exchange them at bank branches were over. This essentially means 97.92 per cent of the total value of the high-value Rs 2,000 banknotes are back in the banking system by the end of July 2024, the Reserve Bank of India said in an update on Thursday.

The total value of Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation was Rs 3.56 lakh crore at the close of business on May 19, 2023, the date on which RBI decided to withdraw the banknote. The last day for the public to avail of exchange or to deposit high-value Rs 2000 banknotes at the banks was October 7, 2023. However, the window for depositing and/or exchanging the Rs 2,000 banknotes continues to be available at the 19 issue offices of the RBI.

Those 19 RBI issue offices are in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Belapur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Patna, and Thiruvananthapuram. People from within the country can send Rs 2,000 banknotes through India Post from any post office to any of RBI Issue Offices for credit to their bank accounts in India.

The Rs 2000 banknotes continue to be legal tender. The Rs 2000 banknote was introduced in November 2016, primarily to meet the currency requirements of the economy expeditiously after the withdrawal of the legal tender status of all Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes in circulation at that time.

The objective of introducing Rs 2000 banknotes was met once banknotes in other denominations became available in adequate quantities. Therefore, the printing of Rs 2000 banknotes was stopped in 2018-19.