Demonetisation: Longer queues may reappear at banks today

New Delhi: After three days of bank holidays, queues are expected to get longer Tuesday. The cash crunch is reported to have escalated after the banks were closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The income-tax department, the Enforcement Directorate and the Financial Intelligence Unit, among other agencies, are now investigating money laundering taking place in banks after the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

Revenue intelligence agencies are learnt to have sent notices to a top private sector bank about a suspicious transaction, that some sources was as high as Rs 100 crores. The bank, when contacted by this newspaper, said it had got an inquiry from the revenue intelligence agencies last week. “It was a routine inquiry and we have replied to the concerned agencies. As per norms, when a high-value transaction takes place, the FIU has to be informed. And we had followed the norms by informing the agency about the transaction,” said a senior bank official. However, he refused to mention what the amount was in the suspicious transaction.

The revenue intelligence agencies are also learnt to have carried out sting operations at least 500 bank branches across the country into allegations of money laundering, and some 400 CDs are with the government. The PMO too is understood to be looking into the CDs.

What has aggravated the cash crunch is that people have not been able to take out money for monthly expenses after payday as the banks have been rationing cash. As Tuesday will be the first working day after the three-day break, people will line up to withdraw cash from their Rs 24,000 weekly withdrawal limit. Some banks filled their ATMs on Monday, but many of these were dispensing only Rs 2,000 notes.

The government, trying to push transactions through the digital payment mode, has already announced discounts for payments through online banking, credit/debit cards and e-wallets for select services. The oil marketing companies have said that the discount of 0.75 per cent on petrol and diesel will kick-in from Monday midnight on fuel purchases made using digital payment.

“This discount will be credited to the customer’s account by way of cashback within a maximum of three working days of the transaction,” the Indian Oil Corporation said. The 0.75 per cent discount on payments made using either credit/debit cards, e-wallets or mobile wallets will mean a rebate of 49 paise a litre on petrol and 41 paise on diesel in New Delhi.

A group of top secretaries formed by the Centre after the demonetisation has advised the government to roll out some more user-friendly modes of digital payments and is in touch with all district collectors and chief secretaries to take stock. The group is regularly interacting with district collectors and the government machinery at the local level to review the situation, specially in rural areas. The group feels there is a need for a new user-friendly version of the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) or mobile short codes that can be used for banking via low-end feature phones and similarly for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a national cashless payment platform. The Aadhaar-enabled payment system seems to be more effective in the villages, and efforts are also on to make it easier to use for general public, it said.