Nearly Rs 6 lakh crore withdrawn up to December 19, RBI says

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday said that 22.6 billion bank notes worth Rs 5,92,613 crore have been withdrawn by public between November 10 and December 19, 2016. November 8, 2016 is when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation drive making 86% of total currency (Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes) in circulation in the country illegal tender. 

RBI said, "Over the period from November 10, 2016 upto December 19, 2016, banks have reported that banknotes worth ₹ 5,92,613 crore have been issued to public either over the counter or through ATMs."

In this period, the Reserve Bank has issued to the banks and their branches, for distribution to the public, a total of 22.6 billion pieces of notes of various denominations of which 20.4 billion pieces belonged to small denominations of ₹ 10, 20, 50 and 100s and 2.2 billion belonged to higher denominations of ₹ 2000 and ₹ 500.

In the first week of December, RBI had said that it had issued currency worth Rs 4.61 lakh crore to the public by December 7, 2016. 

Data compiled by RBI till December 07 showed that 21.8 billion pieces of various notes were issued out of which 20.1 billion were of small denomination notes and 1.7 billion with higher denomination notes. 

This means that RBI has issued 8 billion pieces of various notes in the past week, most of them are of high denomination notes.