Anxious Delhiites reach banks at dawn, queue up for hours

Banks across the national capital opened up to serpentine queues on Thursday as a large number of people rushed to their local branches to get rid of banned high denomination currency for new notes or to deposit them in their accounts even as police maintained tight security.

Anxious customers thronged the branches much before the opening time — some at the crack of dawn — and had to wait for several hours to complete their transactions with senior citizens also not being spared the hardships. Some banks that fell short of currency notes had to even shut their shutters during the day.

With the mad rush at the banks and queues stretching several kilometers from the bank branches, the process to exchange the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes gave a harrowing time to the people.

Many banks ran out of cash much before their working hours, forcing them to turn down the flustered customers. “I had to wait for over three hours to get the Rs 500 notes exchanged. I could only exchange my notes after visiting several bank branches as most of them had ran out of cash,” Krusha Jain, a student said.

Customers came to the branches as early as 8 am in the morning at several places and some people even got into heated arguments with anyone jumping the queue. Senior citizen and women complained that no special arrangements were made for them as they stood in the queue for hours to get their work done.

“I have been standing in the queue since hours for exchanging the denominations as well as depositing the money. Even though the move is good but the whole situation has become chaotic for us as we are not able to buy anything without cash,” Manoj Bidhuri, who waited outside Safdarjung Enclave’s Bank of India, said.

To deal with the heavy rush of customers, banks have set up additional counters for exchange of high denomination in addition to deploying extra staff at all bank branches. However, in some banks, forms needed for the exchange of currency were in short supply while some banks ran out of cash within hours following which they had closed the counters.

Starting Thursday, a person can exchange Rs 4,000 at any bank branch or post office upon producing a valid identity proof. “The money — Rs 4,000 — that I will get in exchange today will hardly suffice. I will have to keep going to the bank everyday from now. Today, I will deposit all old notes,” he said.

Notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 ceased to be legal tenders on Wednesday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Tuesday the decision to withdraw the high-value notes, which are being replaced by new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.

But lack of information and sheer numbers were overwhelming. “I am running high fever but still came to change notes as there is no cash to buy medicines and food,” Paramjeet Kaur, complaining about the forms needed for the exchange not available, said.

Meanwhile, the Delhi police had a busy day on Thursday as they received over 750 PCR calls and had to pacify anxious people and also play peacemaker for people who had made a beeline to exchange and deposit Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes after the government decided to demonetise them.

Sanjay Beniwal, special commissioner of police (operations) said, “We got close to 750 calls from anxious people regarding their notes not being exchanged or banks running out of cash. There were no untoward incidents reported.”

The police played peacemaker in case of a disagreement arising between two parties.

“We got calls in our district over issues like bank hasn’t opened, the bank closed down early, bank staff not having cash or people being pushed out of the queue. There were minor issues that arose and we pacified the situation. In some cases, the bank staff made the call and in some, people made calls,” said DCP(North) Madhur Verma.

In North district, a peon who was sent by his owner to get the notes exchanged was duped by a man.

“After exchanging the notes, when he was coming out, when someone asked him to show the notes. When that person returned the notes to the peon, the latter didn’t count them and after he handed over the notes to his owner, it was found that there were less notes,” said a senior police officer.