DA Editorial Desk | Sara Debbarma
From Monday, 28 September through Wednesday, 30 September, public sector bank branches across India — Tripura’s included — will fall silent as employees observe a three-day nationwide strike called by the United Forum of Bank Unions. Because the preceding days are a fourth Saturday and a Sunday, the practical effect for customers is closer to five consecutive days without branch access, landing squarely on the period banks use for half-yearly closing. Tripura Gramin Bank has already announced it will stay open on Sunday specifically to give customers a window to complete essential transactions before the disruption begins — a sensible, customer-minded step that deserves acknowledgment.
The strike itself is not a sudden or opportunistic move. UFBU, which represents roughly 90 per cent of India’s banking workforce, has been pressing this particular demand — a genuine five-day banking week, with all Saturdays off rather than just the second and fourth — for well over two years, dating back to a March 2024 wage settlement in which employees agreed to extend weekday working hours specifically in exchange for that change. That extension has been honoured on the employees’ side; the corresponding four-Saturday holiday has not been implemented on the government’s. Unions also point to unresolved concerns over the Performance Linked Incentive scheme, pension updates, and a dearness allowance formula, though the Centre says the PLI scheme has already been placed in abeyance as a gesture of good faith. A one-day strike on 11 September failed to break the impasse, and this three-day escalation, following an inconclusive conciliation meeting before the Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner, was always the union’s stated next step if talks stalled.
Whichever side of this dispute one finds more persuasive, the practical concern for Tripura’s bank customers is immediate and specific. Salary credits, cash deposits and withdrawals, cheque clearing, and administrative banking work will all be disrupted for the affected days, though digital channels — UPI, internet banking, and ATM withdrawals where machines remain stocked — should continue functioning largely as normal, offering a real cushion compared to strikes of a decade ago. For a state like Tripura, where a meaningful share of banking activity, particularly in rural areas, still depends on physical branch visits for cash transactions, that cushion matters less than it might in more digitally saturated urban markets.
What Tripura’s residents can reasonably do now is straightforward: complete any pressing cash-dependent transactions before Monday, keep digital banking apps updated and ready as the primary fallback, and expect month-end salary credits and cheque clearances to run late rather than assume they will not arrive at all. Beyond individual preparedness, this newspaper would simply note that a demand under negotiation for over two years, tied to a promise already partially fulfilled by employees on their end, deserves a clearer and more timely resolution from the government’s side than repeated one-off strikes and conciliation meetings have so far produced — for the sake of bank employees and their customers alike.