Banking on RTI

Pune Mirror : Neelambari Bhoge ; Thursday, September 09, 2010 ;

RTI helped a customer figure out why his bank sent him an unauthorised letter saying he had defaulted on his minimum balance

The bank had penalised 55342customers
another reply received under the RTI from
the OBC head office in Delhi dated May 11
for the same query, states that the
number of  defaulters uptil March 2010
was only 19,636.
—Rashad Shaikh, RTI applicant

The power of the Right to Information Act (RTI) has proved itself yet again by helping an applicant to retrieve obscured information. Rashad Shaikh, a resident of the Camp area was able to push the mechanism into action to retrieve some information about the Oriental Bank Of Commerce (OBC) with the help of the RTI tool.

The reason behind this application was that Rashad received an undated and unsigned letter from a branch of the OBC at MG Road, Camp which stated that the minimum account balance has been increased.

“I received this letter which had no details like the date or signature. I filed an RTI for an explanation for this letter. I received the answer that it had been inadvertently sent by the concerned officials.”

Rashad also asked for further information under RTI on February 26 as to how many account holders were defaulters for the same issue. “The bank had penalised 55342 customers”, says Rashad.

He added, “It is interesting to note that another reply received under the RTI from the OBC head office in Delhi dated May 11 for the same query (how many account holders were penalised) states that the number of defaulters uptil March 2010 was only 19,636.”When Pune Mirror got in touch with Purnendu Sarangi, Deputy General Manager of OBC, Pune he said, “The information regarding the penalty for this particular rule is given to the customer on the same day that they open their account. It was a mistake that an undated and unsigned letter was dispatched. It was a computer generated mistake.”

He added, “We have a total of 55,342 savings accounts. The applicant had requested information on the defaulters of three specific types of accounts. The number of defaulters in those came to 19,636 and that is the reason why there was fluctuating number in the tally of defaulters," concluded Sarangi.