SILCHAR, Nov 18 - At a time when there are chaotic scenes in almost all the banks in the country and also in the State with people standing in long queues to exchange currency notes of higher denomination to get notes of lower denomination, a 22-year-old local youth, Ranabijoy Das, voluntarily deposited notes of Rs 100 denomination amounting to a total of Rs 10,000 at the State Bank of India, Hospital branch yesterday.
Son of Ranjit Das, a fruit vendor at Fatak Bazar, Ranabijoy has completed his Civil Engineering from the Assam Engineering College, Guwahati, and is engaged in his father�s business.
�As a businessman, we understand how difficult it is to return change when customers approach us with higher denomination notes. It is just a small effort to help lessen the worries of people standing in bank queues,� Ranabijoy said after depositing the amount. He added that on November 19, some other traders of Fatak Bazar will also deposit currency notes of lower denomination at the same bank.
Meanwhile, N Dhar Choudhuri, manager of the SBI branch, said, �We appreciate the initiative of the young man and we believe that his act will motivate others to help fellow citizens by depositing notes of smaller denomination.�
In the meantime, at a time when there is a lot of chaos over the unavailability of currency notes of smaller denominations across the country and also in Cachar district, officials of the State Bank of India here informed that as many as Rs 7 crore in denomination of Rs 100 alone have been released from the bank only within Silchar town in the past four days.
Further, they have released lower denominations of Rs 50 and Rs 20 for the customers during this period of acute crisis.
Pradip Kumar Paul, Regional Manager of SBI�s Silchar region said, �We understand that people are facing tough times because of the sudden crisis of smaller denominations. We have released a sum of Rs 7 crore and all in the denomination of Rs 100 during the past four days for people within Silchar city. People must have patience in order to overcome this situation.�
He was quick to add that even though denominations of Rs 2,000 are sufficiently available, they are expecting denominations of Rs 500 will reach within the next few days, which will lessen the worries of the people to a great extent.
Paul also said that they are in constant touch with their head office for brining currency notes of smaller denominations at the earliest possible.
