A senior citizen residing in Ranikuthi woke up on Wednesday morning to find the outgoing calls from his BSNL/ Calcutta Telephones landline barred.

A recorded message told him that his bill for the last month had not been paid.

To avoid such hassles, he had opted for the much-touted Electronic Clearance Scheme (ECS), by which the bill is automatically deducted from his bank account.

On calling the bank, he was told that due to the State Bank of India (SBI) strike, the amount had not been debited. And CalTel had promptly disabled his line, ECS or no ECS.

Ten days after the SBI strike ended, BSNL subscribers across the city are feeling the blow out of the blue. Particularly those who pay their phone bills by cheque and worse, those who had opted for the ECS scheme (?the easiest way to pay your bills?, says the CalTel website).

With the hapless consumer caught in the middle, the bank and the service provider were busy playing the blame game. ?The problem lies with SBI. If the subscriber has directed BSNL to debit the bill amount from his account every month, it will be done on a particular date by an automatic process, failing which he will become a defaulter,? said a BSNL officer.

?The strike was unfortunate and as everyone saw, nothing moved during those few days. BSNL should have asked us to re-originate the process,? argued a senior SBI officer.

The unofficial line from an officer of the nationalised bank was: ?Why do you even go for such schemes (like the ECS); you should know they don?t work in our system??

The alacrity with which CalTel had debarred lines without a warning also drew snide comments from the clearing bank.

But what can the likes of B. Ghosh of Dhakuria, warned of disconnection as his cheque (SBI) had not been credited, do to keep their lines alive?

No answers were forthcoming from either BSNL or SBI. A BSNL officer, in fact, suggested that it was the user?s responsibility to arrange for an alternative payment method.

S.K. Chakravarty, chief general manager, Calcutta Telephones, had even less to say. ?My hands are full. I don?t have the time to talk about this now,? he told Metro.