RBI to Issue New Rs 10 Note in Chocolate Brown Colour. Here is What it Looks Like

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is going to issue new Rs 10 notes under the Mahatma Gandhi series with chocolate brown colour as the base. The new note will bear the picture of the Konark Sun Temple.

The apex bank has already printed around 1 billion pieces of the new note, according to people familiar with the matter.

RBI said the new denomination has motif of Sun Temple, Konark, on the reverse, depicting the country's cultural heritage. The note has other designs, geometric patterns aligning with the overall colour scheme, both at the obverse and reverse, it said.

The design was approved by the government last week. The change in design in the old Rs 10 note was last made in 2005. In August last year, RBI had introduced the new Rs 200 and Rs 50 notes under the Mahatma Gandhi series.

The move to reintroduce lower denomination notes in a new design comes after the government’s plan to get rid of counterfeiting.

On 8 November 2016, the government announced demonetisation to withdraw Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes, amounting to around 86% of the currency in circulation of Rs 17.9 trillion. Since then, RBI has replaced these with the new Rs 2000 notes and redesigned Rs 500 notes.

RBI has printed 16.96 billion pieces of Rs 500 notes and 3.6 billion pieces of Rs 2,000 notes as on December 8, according to information given by the finance ministry in Lok Sabha. The total value of such notes translates into Rs 15.79 trillion.

RBI data show currency in circulation was Rs 16.71 trillion as on December 22. This is about 94.4% of the Rs 17.7 trillion that was in circulation on 4 November 2016.

RBI’s annual report for fiscal 2016-17 also showed that the volume of banknotes increased by 11.1% mainly due to higher infusion of banknotes of lower denomination following demonetisation. The government’s rationale behind the move is to check fake notes which had seen a significant jump since 2008. From 195,000 pieces in fiscal year 2008, the number of counterfeit notes increased to 632,000 pieces in 2015-16.