Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, ‘I don’t know’ when he was asked if the emerging reports of 97 per cent of banned notes returning to banks. The Reserve Bank of India has also said that it was yet to collate the reports of counting.
After the December 30 deadline to deposit the old notes was over, some reports emerged saying that 97% of banned notes in circulation returned. If it was true, it would be a huge setback for Modi govt. which expected to flush out at least 30 per cent of the notes in circulation, gauging it as black money.
“Now that the Scheme has come to an end on December 30, 2016, these figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors or possible double counts etc. RBI has already initiated this process and till this is completed any estimate may not indicate the actual amount that has been returned,” the RBI said in a statement on Thursday.
So far, neither the government nor the RBI has officially disclosed how much of the banned notes have been returned.