King George V Multiple Star Watermark

The Star of India Multiple issues of King George V started getting printed at the Security Printing Press in Nashik when the facility commenced operations in 1926. Thomas De La Rue & Co. was instrumental in setting up the press at Nashik, which was earlier deemed to have a favourable climate for printing.

The design remained similar to the previous issues by De La Rue with comparable or slightly different colours for similar values. The main difference was that the sheets used for printing were watermarked with multiple stars instead of a single star. Each sheet had 964 small stars watermarked instead of 256 large stars in the previous printings. The stamps were printed using typography. Lithography was used only for special stamps.

Each sheet had 256 stamps (with Jubilee lines) and later increased to 320 stamps (no Jubilee lines), except for the half-anna ones that were printed in batches of 320 from the beginning. The Rupee series initially had 96 stamps per sheet, that was later increased to 120 per sheet.