Tirupati: The administration of Tirupati temple located at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh have written to the Reserve Bank of India to exchange demonetised currency worth Rs 25 crores. Additional Financial Adviser and Chief Account Officer, O Balaji, of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) said, they want to exchange the amount to ‘honour the sentiments of devotees’.
Lakhs of devotees had deposited demonetised currency in the form of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes in the offering box, after Narendra Modi government had invalidated Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes on November 8, 2016. TTD administers of the hill temple, Balaji said they are waiting for a positive reply from the bank. The scrapped cash stock has been kept at the temple, he added.
The ‘historic’ move had been taken by the centre to ‘fight black money’. However, demonetisation received criticism from Indian as well as the international economists for its poor and hasty implementation. It had also reportedly reduced the industrial production and GDP growth rate.
By the end of August 2017, 99% of the banned currency had been deposited in banks: only approximately ₹14,000 crore of the total demonetised currency had been discarded, leading analysts to state that the effort had failed to remove black money from the system.