Ahead of polls, banks step up vigil to track suspicious transactions

With the five-State Assembly elections round the corner in five weeks, banks have geared up to monitor bulk online and major offline transactions as part of the initiative to make the polls inducements free.

businessline enquiries with the convenors of State Level Bankers’ Committees (SLBCs) of Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram revealed that the banks have already been alerted to take special measures to track and report online transactions en masse. 

“There are specific instructions and standard operating procedures (SOPs) from the Election Commission to track and report any suspicious transactions,’‘ a senior official of State Bank of India (SBI) told businessline.

The SLBCs will coordinate the monitoring by its individual member banks, as per the ECI guidelines. While SBI is the convenor for SLBCs of Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Central Bank of India are convenors from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh respectively. 

A functionary of SLBC of Madhya Pradesh said as part the monitoring, banks will lay a special focus on Know Your Customer (KYC) norms in transactions involving huge deposits or withdrawals. “While front-end operations have to be continued with KYC support and no transaction (debit or credit) can not be halted, back-end data tracing and monitoring is being strengthened for monitoring bulk transactions even though the amount could be small,’‘ he said.  

Banks will also look into the transactions in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts which had shown some upswings in the balances before the elections. Some banks even conducted enquiries, the results of which, however, have not been made public. The SLBCs will also coordinate with other enforcement agencies including I-T Department and Police to report any suspicious transactions. 

While all efforts are being taken, there are operational challenges too. For instance, in the case of a migrant labour, the families may not be here and the transactions could happen in a different number of a family member residing in another State which makes the tracing little difficult, say bankers

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