[Reader-list] Disconnect can be costly!!

[faraaz mehmood]

A fax was sent from Mysore state bank but failed to
reach the udaipur clearing house which was udaipur
state bank & the disconnect cost Rs. 28000 to my bank
the national development bank. All without the
responsibility being pinned on any of the several
players. Since I was incharge of the clearing in my
bank I had to face the music due to cross wire
mis-connection. Such was the story of clearing
cheques. 						In each city a certain state bank is
appointed as a clearing house which is conducted twice
a day at noon & 3 o’ clock in the afternoon. Like all
other banks my bank too scrambles for the piled up
cheques in the front office & the drop-box & does a
brisk sorting & lodging with a grand tally of giving &
claiming the calculated amount from the clearing
house, the udaipur state bank. The 22nd of March was
like any other day. My claims & deductions were neatly
stacked out. My bank customers had deposited cheques
pertaining to some 20 banks all over the city. From
the clearing house I was claiming Rs. Four crores &
offering Rs. Six crores on behalf of my bank as the
stacked cheques amounted to. That fateful day my bank
was short of funds by two crores if the claiming &
offering were subtracted. Now the procedure was to
contact the other local banks for the arrangement for
those two crores. If the local banks failed to remit
this amount then my branch contacted the state head
office at jaipur. Usually the national development
bank jaipur was flushed with funds & they would send
the amount without any hitch. Not to be so on march
the 22nd. The Mysore state bank is an associate of
Udaipur state bank & acts as a mediator to our bank.
The national development bank jaipur requested mysore
state bank to remit the required amount through fax or
telegraphic transfer (tt) the mysore state bank did
so. But the udaipur state bank either failed to
receive the fax or lost the copy in the hullabaloo of
the frantic transactions. As the clearing house at
state bank udaipur resembled a fish market twice a day
on both the clearing house occasions.  											The
state bank udaipur in the absence of the fax received
promptly penalised Rs. 28000 on the deficit of my
bank. I being incharge of the clearing got into a
tailspin. First I went on a pleading spree with
several officers of the udaipur state bank to some how
locate or ascertain the transmission of the fax. Even
the technical verification by the engineer was not of
any help. As the fax report showed only a list of the
last 35 faxes received. Then I contacted my jaipur
branch to do the needful. They in turn got in touch
with Mr. Ramakrishnan of mysore state bank. The
clearing house was flooded with phone calls from
mysore, jaipur & bombay even sending the sent message
copy of the fax. But to no avail. The disdained with
which the public sector banks treat their private
sector counterparts was in full play. The sent in
message had no meaning for the clearinghouse.  							
				A conduit to the solution is still open. In
hyderabad there is an outfit for reconciliation among
the associates of the state bank. It is called Absot.
They employ a technique called value dating. Value
dating essentially means passing or executing an entry
with a retrospective date i.e. if a transaction has
occurred previously but was unintentionally entered
wrongly, the rectification of the same can be
undertaken on a forthcoming date with the date being
the original one i.e. of the transaction. I am hoping
for the realisation of the same at the beginning of
the next week. The officers at absot were listening &
making soothing noises regarding this imbroglio.
Hopefully they would wrench me out of this mess with
some dignity. 								The public sector banks have a
well-entrenched mentality of behaving like sarkari
damads. They claim all privileges of authority & deny
even an iota of credibility to the private players.
The suspicion is so great that they first debit the
penal amount & then listen to the complaint. Logic
pales in the aura of absolute authority. Having said
this there is also mechanisms for reconciliation &
realisation of the lost money. 

MF


		
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