Opposition says BJP-led government compromising national security, financial sovereignty; government denies report.
New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress have accused the BJP-led government at the Centre of compromising the country’s security and financial sovereignty after a Chinese paper reported that a state-owned firm had bagged a contract to print Indian currency notes.
“The prime minister should answer why this information was not disclosed? He should also answer why was there a need to go to a foreign country to get the currency printed?” AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha said.
He added that this could lead to printing of fake notes that could be used to finance terror activities in the country.
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Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted saying that if the report was true, it was a “grave breach of national security”.
Is ‘China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation’ printing currency for Nepal,Bangladesh,Sri lanka?
Is this Dragon’s new design to engulf South East Asia?
Have the Chinese been given a contract to print Indian currency notes?
If so, it’s a grave breach of National Security. https://t.co/YicRkNtITc
— Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) August 13, 2018
Party MP Shashi Tharoor also tweeted that if the report was true, it would have “disturbing national security implications”.
If true, this has disturbing national security implications. Not to mention making it easier for Pak to counterfeit. @PiyushGoyal @arunjaitley please clarify! https://t.co/POD2CcNNuL
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 12, 2018
As per news website Money Control, the RBI has strongly denied the Chinese report.
‘Part of Chinese global footprint’
The opposition was reacting to a news report in the South China Morning Post Sunday, which claimed that India was among a number of countries that had granted the state-owned China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation permission to print currency notes.
The report states that the maximum demand is from countries that are part of the “Belt and Road Initiative”, after which, China thought of increasing its global influence through printing foreign currency.
The corporation’s president Liu Guisheng is quoted as saying that “the company had “seized the opportunities brought by the initiative” and “successfully won contracts for currency production projects in a number of countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland”.
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RBI’s domain
India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, is mandated with meeting currency requirements in the country.
According to RBI, it receives notes from four currency note printing presses. “Two of the currency note printing presses are owned by the Government of India and two are owned by the Reserve Bank, through its wholly owned subsidiary, the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Ltd. (BRBNML),” RBI’s website notes.
There was a shortage of notes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation on 8 November, 2016, invalidating more than 80 per cent of notes in circulation.