Title - Fake notes flood into Western Railway coffers

The city’s suburban railway has had it with the counterfeit and torn notes piling up at its ticket counters. It has now placed orders for fake currency note detecting and counting machines at all booking offices and stations of the Western Railway (WR).

If you think the move will slow down the process of ticketing, relax. WR officials have assured that there will be no such delay.

Railway officials said the trend of passing on fake and torn notes at railway ticket counters has been catching up. Every month, such notes amounting to Rs1-1.2 lakh are collected from WR’s several booking offices and stations.

On whether the new machines will delay the ticket procuring process by slowing down queues, a senior official clarified, “Not every note will be checked. The problem (of fake and torn notes) is more severe at ticket counters of reservation offices where big currency notes, like of Rs1,000 and Rs500 denominations, change hands. It may not always be necessary to check all the notes; just the suspicious ones will be scanned.”

“We are looking at machines that will conform to RBI standards, are easy to operate with simple functions and are user-friendly.

The machines should work fast with very few manual operations and should have a foolproof mechanism to ensure an uninterrupted ticketing process,” he added.

He said the “heavy-duty” machines will be placed at booking offices, reservation offices and parcel offices at stations and will work even under rush hours.

According to the conditions laid down by the WR, the machines for station cashiers should be able to detect all types of Indian currency notes — ones with silver and magnetic strips, those with stains/oil/chemical stains, crumpled/mutilated/torn ones and those with a watermark. The machines must also be capable of being upgraded according to changes in currency notes and standards introduced by RBI from time to time.

WR chief spokesperson Sharat Chandrayan assured that the machines will act as a strong deterrent and will curb the menace of circulation of counterfeit and torn notes.