Bank holiday today! From SBI to HDFC Bank, all lenders closed for two days

Bank holidays are upon us! From State Bank of India (SBI) to HDFC Bank, in short, all lenders, will remain shut and bank customers will not be able to carry out their financial operations for as many as two days starting today. These bank holidays are due to back-to-back festivals. The banks will be closed on Monday as the citizen will celebrate Buddha Purnima, followed by another holiday on May 01 which comes as an International Workers Day or Labour Day. Also it needs to be noted that, Maharashtrians will also have a state holiday on May 01 as the day is considered important as Maharashtra Diwas.

With this, the banking system in India will effect remain closed for as many as four days, among which April 28 came in as fourth Saturday of the month where banks have their holiday, and April 29 being a Sunday. It needs to be noted that bank holidays for Saturday, Sunday and Monday are official, however, Tuesday is negotiable and will depend on the banks system.

Even as bank holidays are on, lenders have rushed to assure that ATMs will be running as usual during this extra long weekend. Interestingly, considering India faced a cash crunch recently, whether ATMs will remain successfully operational will be known soon enough.

There was an unusual spike in cash demand at the ATMs in many parts of India, despite the currency reaching levels during pre-demonetisation period. However, the shortfall has been meet and the initial crisis has abated.

This has caused the finance ministry has asked the I-T department to probe all the large withdrawals made in the past three months. Cash crunch has been reported in several states including Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

On occasion of Buddha Purnima today, interbank forex market has been shut. This means there will be no trading in Indian bonds and currency markets. However the stock exchanges are operating on their regular basis. 

Meanwhile today, the benchmark Sensex index was trading at 35,171.28 above a whopping 201.58 points or 0.58%, whereas the Nifty 50 surged over 55.45 points or 0.52% trading at 10,747.75.