Identifying Currency Notes To Become Easier For Visually Impaired; RBI Includes Tactile Features

New Delhi: It will become easy for visually impaired persons to identify currency notes now. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has included several tactile features in currency notes for their benefit.

Senior advocate Venkatesh Dhond, appearing for the RBI on Monday, informed the Bombay High Court court that apart from developing the application, the RBI had also consulted with several associations working for visually impaired people before the new currency was issued.

“The RBI has developed several tactile features in the currency notes including identification marks and raised lines,” advocate Dhond said, India Today reported.

RBI had developed a mobile application which could be used by visually impaired people after the National Association of the Blind (NAB) filed a Public Interest Litigation, a bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice MS Karnik was informed.

The Rs 100 note has a triangle and four raised lines, Rs 500 note has a circle and five lines and the Rs 2000 note has a rectangle and seven lines for people with special needs to identify them, advocate Dhondh was quoted as saying.

The NAB had filed a petition in 2019 claiming that the new currency notes and coins posed difficulty for visually impaired people in identifying and distinguishing them. The petitioner’s advocate Uday Warunjikar reiterated before the court that, earlier, the notes and coins were of different sizes and hence were easily identifiable.

The division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik noted that the problems raised in the petition were serious and asked the petitioner to file an affidavit giving further suggestions.