Closed bank branches at the BBD Bag and Esplanade areas. Pictures by Bibhash Lodh

Bank employees in Calcutta have showed yet again how to make a strike successful at a time when most political parties have veered away from enforcing shutdowns to make a point.

Picketing outside every branch, non-cooperation from guards at the branches and the ATMs and a threat to damage ATMs forced the management to suspend operations at the branches and shut down the cash dispensers on Thursday.

“The ATM was open till 8am but then some strikers came and asked me to down the shutters. They said if I refused, they would close the ATM themselves. I called up my seniors who asked me to shut down operations immediately,” said a guard at an ATM of a private bank in New Alipore.

Thursday’s strike was part of a nationwide relay strike by bank employees over wages for the second time in less than a month. Bengal had witnessed a bank strike on November 12.

The zone-wise relay strike by the United Forum of Bank Unions started on Tuesday in the southern zone. Besides Bengal, Thursday’s strike covered Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, the Northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Sources, however, said the strike was most successful in Bengal. In the other states the ATMs functioned till they ran out of money. In Bengal, most of the ATMs did not function at all.

“The strike is usually more prominent in the east than in the other zones. In Mumbai, for instance, there is usually no picketing outside branches and ATMs during a strike,” said a senior executive of a private bank.

The last time the city witnessed a bandh was in February 2013, called by Left labour wings over a range of issues, including rise in petrol and diesel prices, FDI in retail and inflation. In most sectors the two-day strike was reduced to a one-day affair, but the banks in the state remained shut on both days.

“What can we do when there is picketing outside the branches? The employees were supposed to turn up but few did fearing trouble,” said a banker.

New Alipore resident Anirban Chowdhury, who runs a shop in Tollygunge, had a tough time. “I needed Rs 20,000 to pay one of my distributors. I forgot to carry enough cash from home and landed in big trouble as all ATMs were closed. I had to request the distributor to supply on credit for the day and take the payment tomorrow,” said Chowdhury.

Gautam Banerjee, the Bengal convenor of United Forum of Bank Unions, boasted that the strike was a complete success.

“Today’s strike was completely successful. The branches and the ATMs of both public and private sector banks were closed. We are demanding a wage revision, pending since 2012. If the government and the managements ignore our demand, we will go for a bigger strike,” he said.

Suicide

Subir Das, 41, a cable operator, allegedly committed suicide at his Sahagunj home in Chinsurah, Hooghly, on Thursday. Family members found Das lying still in the morning and took him to Imambara Sadar Hospital in Chinsurah, where he was declared dead. Police said he had consumed poison following problems with family members.