False Claim About RBI Issuing Guidelines for Ink Colour in Cheques Viral

The RBI has not specified any official colour for writing cheques.

Fact-Check: RBI has not released any such guidelines. 

(Source: The Quint) 

A social media post has claimed that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has changed the guidelines for filling cheques.

The apex bank noted that cheques written in black ink will stand rejected while those written in blue or green will be valid. The reason for this was to prevent fraudulent activities.

This information was attributed to a report allegedly printed in the Times of India on 14 January.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: Facebook) 

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, it is false. Neither does the RBI has no such guidelines for issuing cheques nor has the TOI published any such report.

What we found: We ran a relevant keyword search and did not find any information regarding this.

• We, also, checked TOI's 14 January edition as indicted in the claim, however, no such report was found.

• The keyword search led us to the RBI website's 'Frequently asked questions" section.

• The website mentioned. "The RBI has not prescribed specific ink colors to be used to writing cheques." (sic.)

Here are the details in the FAQ section.

(Source: RBI)

• Team WebQoof also found a report of the TOI from 2019 which noted a judgement of the Madras High Court. It said, "Two distinct inks on the cheque will render it invalid."

• The report also said Justice CV Karthikeyan had issued a ruling, stemming from a second appeal made by a woman named Mallika, whose promissory note, which featured two distinct inks for the amount, was deemed invalid by two lower courts. In the number 35,000, the initial digit (3) was solely in blue, while the other digits (5,000) were in green.

Conclusion: A false claim about specific inks in cheques has gone viral on social media.

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