ACCOUNT HOLDERS QUEUED up outside Yes Bank branches early on Friday morning after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed a one-month moratorium and capped withdrawals at Rs 50,000 during this period. At a branch in Andheri (West), customers began queuing up from 7.30 am, two hours before the branch opened for business. By the time the branch ran out of cash and shut down in the afternoon, it had processed a little more than 100 account-holders. A resident of Four Bungalows, Pradeep Yadav, was among those who could not get inside despite spending several hours in a queue. “I visited two to three times and stood in a queue but it was too long,” he said. To demands from customers that they should be allowed to access their accounts, a bank employee had said, “We have also been caught off-guard by the developments in the withdrawal limit. But there is no need to panic. The RBI’s decision does not mean that the moratorium will last an entire month. As soon as there is a solution, account-holders will be able to withdraw their money,” she said. Bank employees had given paper tokens to the first 100 account-holders in the queue, keeping in mind the cash the branch had in reserve. With the bank’s ATMs shut since Thursday night, Yes Bank debit and credit cards not being accepted at ATMs of other banks and online transfers also not possible through Yes Bank accounts, account-holders could only withdraw money through cheque. Yadav, a former employee of Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, had to be content with a token to enter the branch on Saturday. “I trade in Yes Bank’s stocks and had expected things to improve on Thursday evening after SBI (State Bank of India) announced relief measures. But no one anticipated what would happen after that,” he said. Among account-holders in the queue were Ambani Hospital employees who were standing in the queue during their lunch break. Gyapak Lepcha, who works at a hospitality company in Andheri (West), also spent three hours in a queue only to secure a token for Saturday. Police personnel were also deployed at branches across the city since Friday morning, in anticipation of a law and order situation as thousands of panicked account-holders rushed to withdraw money. At the Andheri (West) branch, the first 100 tokens were exhausted before noon. After that, Lepcha said, bank employees were only allowing account-holders inside on a first-come, first-serve basis. When bank employees announced at 2.45 pm that its cash reserve was over and that the branch would shut for the day, those still in queue demanded to be allowed inside. Bank employees advised those account-holders who did not require money urgently to return on Wednesday after the initial panic subsided. Employees at the branch said they would not be able to process more than 100 withdrawals per day. “This situation is still better than that during the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank crisis last year. The staff here has been polite and patient and is at least providing information on time,” Yadav said. There were similar crowds at other Yes Bank centers in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai with most customers claiming that they were caught unawares by the turn of events.
