Bank customers in northeast reluctant to lodge complaints: Ombudsman

Bank customers in northeast India are shying away from lodging complaints for their banking problems in spite of having ample facilities to do so, RBI's Banking Ombudsman for the region Anand Prakash said Wednesday.

Giving the statistics, Prakash said the eight northeastern states together have registered only 708 cases against banks during fiscal 2011-12 compared to the 72,000 complaints received by the ombudsman nationwide.

He further said that the numbers have increased to 807 in the region in 2012-13 but the number of cases has decreased in rural and semi-urban areas of the region -- 125 complaints in 2012-13 compared to 137 complaints in 2011-12.

Majority of the complaints came from Assam - 617 cases - followed by Meghalaya and Tripura with 43 cases each, he said, adding that the least number of complaints have, however, were registered from Mizoram - only 7 cases in 2012-13.

"I think it is mainly due to lack of awareness and knowledge of the customers of the northeast region that the people are not coming forward to avail the facilities of banking Ombudsman Scheme which was launched in 1995 compared to the other parts of the country," he said.

He further revealed that among the public sector banks, around 379 cases were against the State Bank of India (SBI) group followed by 271 cases against other nationalized banks. There was 72 cases are against United Bank of India (UBI) and 49 cases are against UCO Bank.

"The private sector banks registered 109 cases; highest cases were against HDFC bank with 36 cases and Axis bank with 24 cases," he said.

He appealed to the people of the region to take advantage of the facilities of the Ombudsman and said that most of the complaints registered are settled within a month's time.