Mahatma Gandhi Series
The Gandhi Series of banknotes are issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as the legal tender of Indian rupee. The series is so called because the obverse of the banknotes prominently display the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. Since its introduction in 1996, this series replaced all Lion Capital Series banknotes issued before 1996. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced the series in 1996 with 10 and 500 rupee banknotes. As of 10 November 2016, the RBI issues banknotes in this series in denominations from 5 to 100. Printing of five-notes, which had stopped  earlier, restarted in 2009. On 8 November 2016, the 500 and 1000 banknote denominations of this series were demonetised and the new Mahatma Gandhi Series of banknotes were revealed in denominations of 500 and 2000, intended to replace this series. Security features. The following features are included in the notes. Banknotes. Languages. Each banknote has its amount written in 17 languages. On the obverse, the denomination is written in Hindi and English. On the reverse is a language panel which displays the denomination of the note in 15 of the 22 official languages of India. The languages are displayed in  alphabetical order. Languages included on the panel are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.