Tamil Nadu Muslims go for panic withdrawal from the bank after an advertisement called for mandatory submission of NPR letter as a part of KYC.
A panic withdrawal of 4.5 crore cash, a figure that is six times higher than normal, occurred after the Central Bank of India announced that a letter issued under the National Population Register exercise would be a valid document for customer verification, NDTV reported.
Rs 4.5 crore cash, largely deposits in savings bank accounts, were withdrawn in panic from the Kayalpattinam branch of the Bank in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district since Saturday.
The advertisement reportedly mentioned multiple documents including PAN card, driving license, Aadhaar card, voter identity card and NPR among others. Apparently, did not specify whether customers needed to submit all documents or any of them would suffice. It also said that accounts of those who do not submit the documents before January 31 would be frozen.
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This confusion led to a massive withdrawal of people’s savings from the bank, fearing that failure to submit NPR would result in their accounts getting frozen.
An unidentified depositor, who withdrew nearly Rs 50,000 from her account, told The Indian Express: “Since we had the experience of demonetisation that forced us to stand in the queue for so many days, every customer who was panicked reached the bank. Bank officials were helpless as they couldn’t convince us why RBI included NPR in the list before it is even updated in most states.”
After the panic withdrawal, the bank made a U-turn. In a revised advertisement, it has made the submission of the NPR letter optional, asking customers to submit any one of the documents as proof.
However, Muslims depositors did not seem to be convinced. The bank officials have now decided to put up banners in order to make people aware of the KYC update process.
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