In the last five years, more than 3400 branches of 26 public sector bancks have been merged or closed. All these was because of merger under consolidation scheme. Revealed by RTI enquiry.
A greater part of it, which is 75% of these mergers and closures are of the biggest bank of India which is State Bank of India.
To a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act filed by a Neemuch-based activist Chandrashekhar Gaud, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) informed that 26 public secto banks of the country are merged and closed into 90 branches during FY 2014-15, 126 branches in 2015-16, 253 branches in 2016-17, 2,083 branches in 2017-18 and 875 branches during 2018-19.
The RTI information has been revealed at the time when government is planning to merge the 10 banks into one mega bank.
As per the reply to RTI, there are maximum 2,568 branches of the SBI which got affected because of the merger or closure in the last five financial years.
The RBI also informed that the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore were merged with SBI with effect from April 1, 2017.
Additionally, on 1st April, the Dena bank and Vijaya bank also got merged with Bank of Baroda.
However, the employee organisation of the public banks are opposing these mergers as they think that it will hamper the growth of the already developed banks.