Harassed, stressed and fatigued by the demonetisation operations, bank employees in Bihar have decided to take their grievances to their bosses.

They are planning to demonstrate before the Reserve Bank of India regional office in Patna next week to showcase their plight.

The protest plan is being chalked out by the Bank Employees' Federation, Bihar (BEFB), which is affiliated to the Bank Employees Federation India (BEFI). Discussions are on to fix the date for demonstration.

"We are holding an emergency meeting of our office-bearers tomorrow (Friday) to decide the date when our members will assemble outside the RBI regional headquarters and hold a protest against the conditions we have been put into. We are worried about our safety and security, while our top management has left us in the lurch in the aftermath of demonetisation," BEFB president B. Prasad said today.

Prasad, however, made it clear that the bank employees were not against demonetisation, and their protest was targeted at the way it has been implemented "without any preparation and foresight".

"We will also urge the central government and RBI to take proper steps to improve cash supply and ensure that the needy people, farmers, labourers, small businesses do not suffer due to the scarcity of notes," Prasad added.

Bihar has around 40,000 employees working in public and private sector banks, including regional rural banks. They have been putting in long hours, at times even spending the night at their branches, since November 9 - the day the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes ceased to be legal tender.

The bank employees said the current withdrawal limits as imposed by the central government and the RBI are Rs 24,000 in a week for common people, Rs 50,000 a week for registered traders and up to Rs 2.5 lakh for marriage purposes, but these are not being met at the majority of bank branches - especially those operating in semi-urban and rural areas.

"Bank branches are facing an acute shortage of currency notes, and are even unable to meet the withdrawal limits imposed by the central government and RBI. The RBI is unable to meet the demand of currency notes at bank branches," BEFB general secretary Ranjan Raj told The Telegraph.

The banker say that the 86 per cent of notes that went of circulation from November 9 amounted to around 22 billion (2200 crore) pieces of notes. They pointed out that the capacity of the four currency printing presses of RBI at Salboni (Bengal), Mysore (Karnataka), Nashik (Maharashtra) and Dewas (Madhya Pradesh) is around 35 billion pieces per annum. Hence, they said, it could take more than six months to fill the void created by withdrawing the old Rs 500 and 1000 notes.

The bank officials said they were witnessing long queues of customers, who are being consoled by maximum withdrawal of Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 due to the short supply of currency notes. They added that several currency chests remained almost empty due to short supply of cash.

"We are witnessing a situation where bank employees face the wrath of customers despite working patiently even up to 10pm at night. We have been threatened with dire consequences by customers flocking to the branches. One such incident happened at the Punjab National Bank (PNB) branch at Samyagarh in Mokama area of Patna district, where people, who were angry over lack of cash, had brought kerosene oil and threatened to burn the building," said Umesh Kumar Verma, deputy general secretary of BEFB.

Similarly, the bankers pointed out that customers, whose family members are getting married, were unable to avail of the Rs 2.5 lakh withdrawal limit because they have to mandatorily provide 33 types of details, including PAN number, identities, account balance as on November 8, 2016, particulars of decorators and vendors among other things.

Those caterers, vendors, decorators who do not have PAN cards will have to give a written declaration and bank account details to their clients.

BEFB members Ramji Prasad and Deepak Kumar Ghosh pointed out that the RBI has resorted to supplying soiled notes that had been withdrawn from circulation and were to be destroyed.