The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has advised the banks vide its Master Circular dated July 1, 2014 on Customer Service regarding use of regional languages in public/private sector banks as under:

·         Displaying indicator boards at all the counters in English, Hindi as well as in the concerned regional language. Business posters at semi-urban and rural branches of banks should also be in the concerned regional languages.

·         Providing customers with booklets consisting of all details of service and facilities available at the bank in Hind, English and the concerned regional languages.

·         Use of Hindi and regional languages in transacting business by banks with customers, including communications to consumers.

·         In order to ensure that banking facilities percolate to the vast sections of the population, banks should make available all printed material used by retail customers including account opening forms, pay-in-slips, passbooks etc, in trilingual form i.e., English, Hindi and the concerned Regional Language.

·         All cheque forms should be printed in Hindi and English. The customer may, however, write cheques in Hindi, English or in the concerned regional language.

·         Both the drop box facility and the facility for acknowledgement of the cheques at regular collection counters should be available to the customers and no branch should refuse to give an acknowledgement if the customer tenders the cheques at the counters. The above message is required to be displayed in English, Hindi and the concerned regional language of the State.

            This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.

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DSM/KA