Former chairman of the State Bank of India Arundhati Bhattacharya (PTI Photo/File)
While giving away the awards at the Council for Fair Business Practices (CFBP) for highest ethical practices in business, former chairman of the State Bank of India, Arundhati Bhattacharya, also spoke about the challenges after the demonetisation was announced and subsequent task of sending new notes to all its branches and others.
“If we go back to the time of demonetisation, we got a notice of 36 hours, we were told at 8 in the evening that next day would be holiday, day after at 10 am open your counters with new notes. And that point of time, I did not even know where the notes were. I knew they were there in the currency chests but the people who were in charge of currency chests had been made to sign a non-disclosure agreement by the Reserve Bank of India,” said Bhattacharya adding that the bank management was not in the know where the new notes were.
She was speaking at an event of giving awards to large and small enterprises with charitable associations for fair business practices. “When we came out at nine in the night the first thing I started looking out is where these notes were and then ensuring that those 22,000 branches of ours actually got the notes in time. SBI not only funds its own branches, but also funds the entire postal system which has 10,000 outlets, it funds the cooperative banks. So if you put all of it together, getting notes out in a space of 36 hours was a task beyond any kind of human logic or planning but we got it done,” she added.
She further suggested the CFBP of using the digital medium for awareness, focusing segment wise to increase involvement of industries.