₹500 — Five Hundred Rupees
The artwork
Front: Mahatma Gandhi in three-quarter profile against a stone-grey ground, with the Ashoka Lion Capital below the Reserve Bank's guarantee clause and the Governor's signature. The denomination appears in Devanagari and English numerals, with a raised identification mark for the blind and the promise to pay set out in Hindi and English. Fine guilloche and microlettering fill the surrounding field.
Back: The Red Fort at Delhi seen along its sandstone ramparts, the Lahori Gate and chhatris picked out in line engraving, the national tricolour flying above in colour — one of the few flashes of colour on the note. Captioned लाल किला / RED FORT. Left of it, the language panel giving 'five hundred rupees' in fifteen scripts; below, the Swachh Bharat spectacles logo and the year 2022.
In circulation
Issued from November 2016, when the withdrawal of the old 500- and 1,000-rupee notes left the denomination to be rebuilt from scratch in this smaller stone-grey format. It replaced the previous Mahatma Gandhi Series 500 and remains legal tender and in everyday use; the 2,000-rupee note introduced alongside it has since been withdrawn.
Details
- IssuerReserve Bank of India
- CurrencyRupee (₹)
- DenominationFive Hundred Rupees
- Collectedon the India journeys, 1992–2026
- SeriesMahatma Gandhi (New) Series, dated 2022
- WatermarkMahatma Gandhi portrait with electrotype 500
- SecurityWindowed security thread shifting green to blue, see-through register, colour-shifting denomination numeral
- SignatureGovernor, Reserve Bank of India
- Dimensions150 × 66 mm