Rs 2.3 crore demonetized currency offered at Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu

Jammu: The second richest Hindu shrine in India has received over Rs two crore as donations in demonetised currency, a media report said Thursday.
Business Today reported that the devotees have offered Rs 2.3 crore worth of the demonetised currency notes since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation on November 8, 2016 at the Vaishno Devi shrine in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir.
“It has been long since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stopped taking demonetised currency notes but many people still hold old and invalid currency notes. t has been long since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stopped taking demonetised currency notes but many people still hold old and invalid currency notes,” the report said.
The report said the pilgrims had offered the banned currency notes worth Rs 1.9 crore in just one month after the note ban but the offering saw a steep decline in 2017 and 2018.
The total offerings at the shrine in the past two years amounted to Rs 40 lakh, a Hindustan Times report said.
Simrandeep Singh, the shrine board CEO, told the HT: “There is no dip in the offerings. Rather the trend is encouraging but yes some devotees still offer demonetised currency. This figure of such demonetised currency has reached Rs 40 lakh.”
Singh added since the RBI has stopped accepting these notes, the board now plans to dispose them off “in an appropriate manner”. The cash-rich shrine received Rs 164 crore in offering in the year 2018, Rs 10-crore rise from a year before.
Demonetisation of high-value currency notes — Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes — that constituted 86.4 per cent of the money in circulation in November 2016 was a step taken to bring back money that was out of the banking system. The total value of invalidated Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at the time of demonetisation was Rs 15.44 lakh crore, out of which Rs 16,000 crore was not returned to the RBI.