The complaints received at the office of Banking Ombudsman at Chandigarh have nearly doubled in the last six years. The number of complaints received in the financial year 2012-13 were 3,955,which is nearly double the number in 2006,Banking Ombudsman R K Sood said at a press conference on Thursday. The BO has intervened in 55 complaint cases in the 2012-13 FY and a sum of Rs 17.75 lakh has been paid to the complainants. The banks have as well have paid substantial amount towards the failed ATM transactions and a major bank has paid around Rs 28.6 lakh in respect of 91 ATM transactions, Sood said. He also said that in other transactions related to the pre-payment charges,non-adherence to fair practices and cheque remittances,a sum of Rs 26 lakh has been paid in 6 cases at the instance of OBO. The percentage share of complaints received is about 46 per cent from Punjab,15.6 per cent from Himachal Pardesh and 10.6 per cent from Chandigarh. The complaints are also due to the increase in the number of branches. During the year 2012-13,total number of branches in our jurisdiction have increased from 7,355 to 8,088, Sood said. The share of nationalised banks has increased by 10 per cent - 60 per cent to 70 per cent. Sood said the average disposal time taken for disposing complaints has come down from 69 days in 2009-10 to 35 days in the year 2012-13. He also added that in order to facilitate the resolution of complaints regarding ATM transactions,it has been decided in consultation with National payment corporation of India that the complainants may be entitled to request for the CCTV camera footage of relevant to the complaint from the bank.
