RBI Guv appears before Parliament Panel for second time

RBI Governor Urjit Patel on Wednesday appeared before a Parliamentary panel for the second time and is understood to have said the deposited banned notes are still being counted and therefore was not in a position to give a figure of the scrapped currency back in the system.

During the more than three-hour long meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance, Patel took a lot of questions but members, who did not want to be named, said he did not provide any "specific number" on the amount of money that came back to the system post-demonetisation on November 8. The Committee is chaired by senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily.

With Patel not providing any particular figure, saying that counting of the notes was still in progress, many panel members were reported to have expressed dissatisfaction with his replies. Moily said the Committee will present its report on demonetisation in the Monsoon Session of Parliament and that the RBI Governor will not be called again on the note ban issue. The session is scheduled to start on July 17 and is expected to conclude on August 11. "We had a lengthy discussion (on demonetisation and various other issues) today... The panel will not be calling RBI Governor again on the issue of demonetisation," Moily told PTI. Patel appeared before the panel for the second time today after cancellation of old Rs 500 and 1,000 currency notes on November 8 -- a government decision which had attracted a lot of criticism from the Opposition. In January too, the RBI governor had appeared before the committee and had told the members that he would submit a statement on the amount of money that came back into the system after demonetisation. Along with Patel, RBI Deputy Governor S S Mundra was also present at today's meeting. After the meeting, a senior member, who did not want to be named, said the governor did not provide any figure but gave details on remonetisation. Replying to queries from the members on demonetisation and its fallout, Patel said counting of banned old Rs 500 and 1,000 currency notes goes on continuously for six days in a week.