Over two years after denomination of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) continues to retain junked currency worth Rs 30.4 lakh that devotees had offered at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in the northern Indian state of Punjab.
SGPC officials claim the notes were donated a few months after the Indian central government banned the notes on November 8th, 2016.
The deadline to exchange or deposit these notes with the banks was fixed as December 31, 2016, but it was later extended to March 31, 2017. 
But despite the deadline, the scrapped notes kept pouring in till July 2017 and have still not completely stopped, SGPC chief secretary Dr Roop Singh told .
The demonetised Indian currency Source: Pixabay
“We have maintained a proper record of it, ascertaining that the money was received through the donation by devotees. We received some old notes later also, but these were placed in the ‘Khote Sikke’ head,” said Roop Singh, SGPC chief secretary.
Now lumbered by the surfeit of unusable donations, the SGPC has once again written to the Reserve Bank of India Governor requesting him to exchange the currency so it can be put to some use rather than just being trashed.
But Golden Temple is not the only shrine to receive the scrapped currency notes.
As per the latest report, the famous shrine of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh also reportedly possesses demonetised note bundles with a total face value of about Rs 250 million. 
Even the Hindu shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir received Rs 4 million in demonetised currency, long after the exchange deadline had expired.
Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir in India Source: Facebook
The demonetised currency kept coming in despite the shrine board’s repeated warnings in the form of pamphlets and posters put up across the shrine, claimed a board official.
Did you know it is illegal to hold on to demonetised currency?
It is imperative to point out that holding on to more than 10 notes by an individual or more than 25 for research related purposes is a criminal offence, attracting fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.
The law was passed with a view to eliminating the prospect of running a shadow economy using the scrapped notes.
However, there has been no conviction under the said law so far.
