Heena Sharma Blog

Banking services were partially affected for the second day on Wednesday, as a section of PSU bank employees came in support of the nation-wide strike call given by 10 central trade unions against the alleged anti-labour policies of the government. All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) and Bank Employees' Federation of India (BEFI) have supported the strike, which has impacted banking operation where these two unions are strong. However, the operation in SBI and private sector banks remained unaffected as other seven unions in the banking sector are not part of the strike. According to AIBEA General Secretary C H Vekatchalam, cash transactions, clearance of cheques, remittances, bills discounting and foreign exchange transactions were impacted. Cheques worth about Rs 20,000 crore could not be cleared by the clearing houses all over the country yesterday, he claimed. Read More Business Standard

With the year coming to an end, and no communication on the issue of updating pension yet, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could be heading towards big agitations in the New Year. The government was expected to communicate by month-end its nod for improvement of the RBI's pension scheme, but that has not been done yet. In August, the RBI staff went on mass leave, protesting the government's rigid stance on the issue, harming the "real-time gross settlement" system for a few hours. However, this time, the unions may go on an indefinite strike and the RTGS system, which is the backbone of financial transactions in the country, could get severely impacted for days on end, the unions have threatened. What is the RBI pension issue The central bank has a pension kitty of over Rs 160 billion with which it manages the pension of its staff. For this purpose, it doesn't seek money from the government like other central government departments. At the ve