City petrol pumps reject defaced currency notes

Petrol pump owners in Mumbai have now started rejecting defaced currency notes and have also put up notices announcing this at their stations. It happened after Reserve Bank of India's fake message went viral on social media.

The message states that RBI will not accept defaced currency notes from the new financial year. This notification has been sent to all the banks to refuse collection of defaced notes citing Clean Note Policy of RBI.

"We have asked the customers to give clean currency notes and we have stopped accepting currency notes with anything scribbled or written on them", said Satish Gholap, manager of a petrol pump at Andheri West.

Another petrol pump owner from Bandra said, "If the customer gives us a defaced note, we ask him to either change it or pay the bill online. At times when there is no option left we have to collect such notes. Lately we have seen that new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 currency notes have been defaced."

Ravi Shinde, President of petrol dealers association, said, "We have received a fake message about the RBI notification which has led to panic among our members due to which they have stopped accepting such kind of notes."

"We have appealed to our members that they shouldn't cause any inconvenience to the customers and collect the defaced currency notes because it is legal money and the RBI has not come out with any such notification", said Shinde.

The Reserve Bank Of India in their recent notification had revealed that the defaced notes are legal and they have not asked the bankers to reject such currency notes.