My Experience of Digital India: A Case of UCO Bank

UCO Bank is one of the Nationalised Banks of India

I worked at a location near Chandigarh for about a year and my organization’s salary account was with the local UCO branch. After a year, I moved to NCR Delhi. At that time, I did not close my UCO account, as the final salary was yet to come in my UCO Bank account. Once all my financial transactions were complete, I decided to close my UCO Bank account, as there is no point in maintaining several bank accounts. In addition, one has to mention all bank accounts (irrespective of whether it is operational or not) when you are filing tax returns.

Since all banks are nowadays connected with each other digitally, I went to a local branch of the UCO Bank in Gurgaon. I went there sharp at 10 AM which is the timing of their customer dealing but had to wait for at least half an hour for the ladies and gentlemen of the bank to start dealing with customers. Then I was in for a shock when they told me that I cannot close my account like this and I will have to physically go to the branch where I have the account to get it closed. This despite the fact that I was carrying all documents to prove my identity as well as Original Pass Book, unused chequebook etc.

Well I did not give up. A friend of mine was going back to the place where I had worked and he had his account in the same bank branch. Therefore, I gave him an application for the Bank Manager along with the Pass Book and the unused chequebook so that my account can be closed. He called me from the bank and said that the bank is not accepting the documents. I called the Manager from my registered mobile number with the bank asking them why my account cannot be closed despite presenting all documents and that the person carrying the documents also is an account holder with the bank. The manager told me that I have to be physically present to close the account. They expect me to “physically” make a round trip to 700 km spending two days and five thousand rupee only in order to close an account.

I did what any sensible person would do. I withdrew whatever little money I had in the account by making some purchases. Now the UCO bank can do whatever they want to do with the account with Rs 4 that is now left in the account!

Digital India with rules from colonial times!