Several depositors at Punjab National Bank were at their wits’ end as the bank had deducted TDS (tax deducted at source) on every cash withdrawal they did.
The incidents happened at the erstwhile United Bank of India branches, which saw complaints pouring right from the start of the banking hours Tuesday.
“The bizarre development came to my notice last night,” said Abhijit Sen, a resident of Salt Lake who withdrew Rs 30,000 from a branch in his locality on Monday morning. He got a message later in the day saying the bank deducted Rs 6,000 as TDS!
ET found out that customers of several other branches (formerly UBI branches) faced a similar plight.
“This happened due to wrong data entry when data cleaning was taking place,” a senior PNB executive said. “There is no question of panic. All amounts will be refunded within 24 hours,” he said.
ET was first to bring the matter to the notice of senior bank management. Some of the branch managers ET spoke to said that they were in the process of compiling the customers’ complaints and sending them to the zonal office.
The incident was restricted to only former UBI branches, officials said.
PNB uses three separate servers after its merger with UBI and Oriental Bank of Commerce since the technical integration of the merger is yet to be completed.
