Money order to get a fillip
The good old ‘money order’ service of the India Post has been saved from meeting the same fate as the telegram service, which was closed forever in 2013.
27 May 2015 | 3428 Views | By Dibyajyoti Sarma
Instead, the department of posts under the Ministry of IT and Communication has decided to adopt state-of-the-art printing technology to come up with new postal orders of Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 50 and Rs 100 denominations.
In response to a query filed by RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal, the department recently revealed that a new Indian Postal Order design in these denominations has been approved and an order has been placed with the Security Printing Press, Hyderabad.
As for the Money Order Service, which is facing stiff competition now from online transfers and various bank schemes, the department of posts said there is no plan to discontinue it. “Time to time, review of all the postal services is being carried out.”
Responding to the developments, Agrawal said the Central Information Commission had taken note of the “obsolete-style and outdated printing” aspects of existing postal orders and recommended they be improved.
The RTI activist has also been asking for special RTI stamps as these would save hundreds of crores of rupees involved in handling the large number of postal orders currently used for payment of RTI fees and copying charges under the RTI Act.