Letter to BS: Indian Bank's plea on Rs 2000 notes is out of sync

This refers to “Customers will no longer get Rs 2,000 currency notes at Indian Bank ATMs” (February 22). The news — that bank customers would no longer get Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes at Indian Bank ATMs as the lender has advised its branches to immediately stop loading that currency at its ATMs and cash recyclers -- makes interesting reading. Reasonably speaking, its latest plea — that the high-value notes were causing inconvenience to customers as they found it hard to exchange those in retail outlets and other places — seems to be highly untenable and out of sync.

But if that is indeed the case, the bank management should have taken that well-meaning, customer-oriented step much earlier. Commercial banks have to mandatorily go by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines related to the operations of the ATMs, issued from time to time. One also shudders to imagine whether such a move has anything to do with the recent media reports indicating the ultimate “withdrawal” of Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes from  circulation. Mind you, the RBI is understood to have stopped the printing of these notes which have become scarce across the country.

S K Gupta,  New Delhi

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