Govt lines up drive to safeguard currency
With rising volumes of fake currency taking on the dimension of a new front in India’s fight against terror, government has embarked upon a serious exercise to check the menace.
The government is planning to move beyond regular measures like introduction of new security features on currency notes to check against counterfeiting.
The new risk-proofing exercise that is being worked out will start right from the purchase of paper, to the material that is used for printing currency notes and minting coins and extend to new designs.
For starters, government has already started work on setting up its own currency-paper manufacturing facility. This follows fears that the paper, which as per the contract with the vendors, is supposed to be exclusively supplied to India, might be finding its way to others.
Indigenisation of the currency printing set-up was one of the key recommendations of former national security adviser J N Dikshit, who went into the issue against the backdrop of the gigantic counterfeiting of stamp papers by Abdul Karim Telgi.
While the idea is to first reduce dependence on imported paper before meeting the entire requirement locally, paper-manufacturing facility could be a public-private initiative and not a government set-up, a source said. The ink, in any case, is manufactured locally.
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