A union of printing press workers on Wednesday claimed that a press in Nashik has stopped printing Rs 200 and Rs 500 notes after running out of ink, PTI reported.

This could be one of the reasons of the shortage of currency notes in ATMs, the union’s President Jagdish Godse said. Currency Note Press is one of the presses where Indian banknotes are printed. It is a unit of Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India.

“The ink used to print the notes is imported, which is not available now, leading to a halt in printing of these Rs 200 and Rs 500 banknotes,” Godse claimed. He did not specify when the printing came to a halt.

People from several states, including Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar and Telangana have said in recent days that ATMs in their areas either do not have cash or are not functioning.

The government and the Reserve Bank of India have said that more currency notes are now being printed to deal with the cash crunch.