SBI branches in Bengal open today

People queued up in all the branches of the SBI in the state,though due to the link failure,money could not be withdrawn from the bank. The angry customers of the bank agitated inside the bank premises as it was the only day before Pujas when the bank was open. Incidentally,the SBI was earlier scheduled to remain closed for five days during the Pujas. With the ATMs also mostly not functioning since the morning,there were impromptu protests by the customers in many branches of the bank. The SBI has over 1,000 branches and similar number of ATMs in West Bengal.

“There has been a server problem all over India,” the bank’s Assistant General Manager (Public Relations),Bengal Circle,Subrata Biswas said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said,“It was a bit unnatural to us also that a nationalized bank will remain closed for consecutive five days. Moreover,this week is the starting week of the month and the Puja days are also here. There are several people who could not even draw their salaries. So it has been decided the bank will remain open today and tomorrow. The leave of the bank employees on Sunday has been cancelled.”

A senior bank official said,“SBI’s central server crashed on Saturday leaving thousands of its customers in Kolkata in a fix before the Durga Puja. But we have started offline payments also by issuing tokens to the customers who were present in the branches.”