Mumbai: In order to check the menace of fake currency notes, a high-level committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested a slew of measures, including in-built currency checking mechanism at all ATMs and note sorting machines or desktop sorters at all bank branches, in a phased manner. The committee said the performance parameters of sorting machines could be standardised so that they all adhere to a uniform standard of counterfeit detection. The committee, led by RBI deputy governor Usha Thorat, observed that the current rule, which requires any person who has inadvertently got up to five fake notes to compulsorily file an FIR, may be scrapped. “A simple report may be filed with the branch which in turn may include this in the counterfeit currency report to RBI,’’ the committee said. The RBI committee was set up after the Dumariaganj incident in UP in July 2008. At that time the UP Special Task Force, along with other enforcement agencies, had detected 76,000 fake currency notes from the currency chest of a public sector bank and the cashier was arrested for his role in proliferating such notes. The committee suggested that banks may go for periodic audits of companies to which they outsource ATM management activities. “Banks may switch over to the ‘cassette swap’ system to feed the ATMs,’’ it said. In a cassette swap system in ATMs, one or more secured baskets of notes are replaced while the other process is to manually stack currencies in ATMs when these machines go out of notes. It said RBI could ensure that notes from old series are withdrawn strictly as per the policy in place and that “the new series of bank notes with more robust security features be introduced as early as possible’’. It has also asked the central bank to facilitate R&D efforts for security features. The report said, “RBI may take initiatives in promoting use of cards and electronic means of payment.’’ It proposed the use of close-circuit TVs, electronic bio-metric access and electronic locking of bins at currency chests and vaults. “Networking of CCTVs at chests within the jurisdiction of a controlling office of the bank may be explored for better surveillance,’’ it said.
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