Kumar Rajiv Nayan
Ara : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to open its chest at Bhojpur district headquarters Ara in view of lack of space in banks to keep properly the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes after demonetisation on November 8, 2016. The RBI has directed management of different banks to deposit the scrapped notes directly into RBI chest.
Chief General Manager, RBI, P Kumar wrote to the Chairmen and Managing Directors of the Public sector banks, private banks, Regional Rural banks, Urban Cooperative banks, State Cooperative banks asking them to deposit scrapped notes directly into the RBI. The RBI will provide locker like facility to the banks. The RBI will keep the money in its vault and keys of the vault will be with the banks concerned. The RBI will take written guarantee from the banks at the time of deposit that the RBI will recover the money from the bank concerned if it is found short at the time of counting as it has no time at present to count them and for this purpose the banks have to enter into an agreement with the RBI.
In the meantime, due to shortage of hard cash, mobile banking is getting popular in urban as well as in rural areas. At least 360 shop- keepers have applied to the Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India and other private banks for point of sale (POS) machines for easy business transaction. Small businessmen are opting for PAYTM and other banking applications while the big ones including petrol pump owners started accepting call types of cards for cash transaction. At least 1,500 kg gold mostly jewellery are kept in 3,002 lockers of 210 branches of different banks in Bhojpur district.
Businessmen like Raghunath Kesari, Kamal, Arun Kumar and other said that rush of people at ATM counters have come down but swipe machines are available in some banks. Punjab National Bank, Lead Bank Manager, Bijay Kumar said that swipe machines are available in SBI, PNB, HDFC and ICICI banks at present and the other banks will be equipped with swipe machines within a month. He added that out of 65 ATMs at Ara town, 56 were working on Sunday and the new note of Rs 500 denomination is now available in ATMs in Bhojpur. Meanwhile, education department directed all the teachers to link their bank account with Aadhar numbers in December, 2016, otherwise they will not get their salary from January 2017, said the District Education Officer, Bhojpur. t 0get