How soiled notes/ Mutilated Notes exchanged in banks?

You may be holding a few currency notes which have become dirty due to normal wear and tear or two piece note pasted together wherein both the pieces presented belong to the same note and form the entire note with no essential feature missing. These notes are called as ‘soiled notes’ as per RBI definition. Soiled notes can be exchanged by you over the counters of RBI/ any bank branch or same may be deposited to the credit of your bank account. These notes accepted by the banks will be deposited to currency chests for onward transmission to RBI offices as soiled note remittances for further processing.

Soiled Note Exchange Rules:  Soiled Note presented in small numbers by a person up to 20 pieces with a maximum value of ₹ 5000 per day, are exchanged by the banks over the counter, free of charge. Where the number of notes presented by a person exceeds 20 pieces or ₹ 5000 in value per day, banks may accept them, against receipt, for value to be credited later and also levy service charge for the same.

Mutilated notes:

When a portion of currency note is missing or which is composed of more than two pieces is known as mutilated notes. Mutilated notes may be presented at any of the bank branches. However, such notes will be accepted by the banks for exchange subject to adjudication in accordance with “the Reserve Bank of India (Note Refund) Amendment Rules, 2018. As per note refund rules, a note individually have an area equal to or more than 40 percent of the total area of the note in that denomination, then the claim may be refunded for full value of the note. Whereas value of a mutilated note of less than rupees fifty denomination is  refunded in full depending upon  the undivided area of the single largest piece which is bigger than half of the area of the notes in a particular denomination. Mutilated notes presented in small numbers by a person up to 20 pieces with a maximum value of ₹ 5000 per day, are exchanged by the banks. However, if the non-chest branches are not able to adjudicate the mutilated notes, the notes may be received by the concerned bank branch against a receipt and same will be sent to the linked currency chest branch for adjudication. The probable date of payment will be informed to the tenderers on the receipt itself. In any case, exchange period does not take more than 30 days. Bank account details should be provided by the tenderers for crediting the exchange value by electronic means.

Extremely brittle, burnt, charred, stuck up Notes:

Banks do not accept Notes for exchange such as turned extremely brittle or are badly burnt, charred or inseparably stuck up together which cannot withstand normal handling. In such cases you may tender those notes to the concerned Issue Office of RBI where they will be adjudicated under a Special Procedure.

The notes bearing slogans/political messages/pay/paid/rejected stamps or found to be deliberately cut, torn, altered or tampered with, if presented for payment of exchange value  will be rejected under Rule 6(3)(ii) of the Reserve Bank of India (Note Refund) Rules, 2009.