Originally Posted by
golmaale
Just an update on my earlier posts in this thread .... I arrived at Calcutta a few days ago and spent an hour at the airport tracking down various Customs officers till one finally printed a form for the official currency import declaration. Then I had to write down the serial numbers of each note and finally after another long wait the senior Customs guy (whose designation is a "Public Relations Officer") signed the declaration. So far so good.
The very next morning I went to the RBI and after negotiating a formidable gauntlet of protesting Trinamul rowdies at the main gate, I reached the main banking hall of the RBI.
After more queues I was told that Indian citizens arriving after 1 January were allowed to deposited any amount of old currency, but foreign citizens with OCI/PIO cards, such as yours truly, were sadly out of luck.
All they could do would be to write the RBI, await their response or wait for a possible change of rules.
So I have been the victim of a thug pickpocket called Narendra Modi.
On Jan 6th, you posted that you will be arriving shortly in India.
By that time, announced rules were pretty clear. Even on Jan 5th, on this thread, link to actual circular and essence of that circular was already posted/discussed. OCI will not be allowed to exchange notes was as clear as it can get by Indian standards.
So why bother visiting RBI? or even spend an hour filling up form knowing fully that one is clearly not eligible?
Hope is eternal and one is of course entitled to engage in futile activity if one chooses but then why not label resulting frustration as misplaced hope rather than pickpockting.
One way to look is that maximum we are going to loose is Rs 25000 (about 360 USD). It is bad but certainly not as bad as babus not allowing only son to cremate his father just because he visited 2 months earlier on multiple-enrty 10 year visa durng father's bypass surgery.