New Delhi: With withdrawals from Yes Bank capped at Rs 50,000 per depositor, tension among customers of the crisis-hit bank in Delhi-NCR was evident. Though there were no long queues outside bank premises, but rush inside bank branches was “huge”.
One of the customers of Yes Bank’s Noida Sector 18 branch claimed that in his two years of association with bank, he had never seen so many people inside the bank premises.
“Usually there are very few people inside the bank to deposit or withdrawal, but now it feels like we have entered into a government bank. The rush is huge inside,” Karan Gera who works in a Noida film city.
Meanwhile, almost all branches of the bank had copies of the Gazette notification pasted at their main entrances, informing about the moratorium imposed till April 3, by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) capping withdrawal at Rs 50,000 per depositor.
Some branches however very cleverly used their double entry to misguide depositors that the bank was closed.
Instead of keeping the main entry open, in some of the YES BANK branches, the local administration was using the entrance passing through the adjoined ATM counters.
“Initially I thought the bank was closed, however when I saw three men walking out of the ATM one behind other I thought I could get my cash ATM. It was then that I saw a side entry into the bank from ATM,” Amiya, who claimed to have a current bank account in the bank’s Sant Nagar branch said.
However, apart from the crowd, Amiya’s main concern was that all transactions of his business firm were made through this account and now with a limit to withdraws he fears being cash strapped.
“All my payment by the debtors are made to this account through cheques, plus have a huge amount of money deposited into the account for business transactions. If the limits are not removed I would soon turn cashless,” he added.
Many agitated customers confronted the Yes Bank officials by comparing the crisis to the Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank imbroglio which erupted last September.
However, the officials defended themselves by claiming that while the PMC Bank crisis was due to frauds, the Yes Bank was only a case of liquidity crunch which would be resolved within a month, and customers woes would ease.
Given the state of the customers of PMC Bank with around a dozen deaths reported so far, there are few takers for the Yes Bank’s arguments after the sudden developments last night.
The Yes Bank has over 1,000 branches and 1,800-plus ATMs around the country which are under severe stress after the crisis erupted last night.
Prasanta Patnaik