Dehradun/Nainital: On the third consecutive day, cash crunch in ATMs hit several cities in Uttarakhand. The situation in Dehradun worsened as not just in ATMs but residents returned empty handed from bank branches too on Wednesday.Uttarakhand has over 60 chest branches and according to bank officials, the currency shortage was worst both in hills and plains. With the Char Dham yatra kicking off on Wednesday, the state government is battling the shortage of currency even after getting the Reserve Bank of India remittance of over Rs 400 crore on Wednesday.State finance secretary, Amit Negi said that the RBI remittance has reached all the banks in Uttarakhand; and in next two days, the cash would reach all places. “The state government and regional RBI office is closely monitoring the situation on the Char Dham route and other districts and the currency availability would normalize in another week’s time,” Negi said.In Dehradun, only four ATMs had cash on Rajpur road area while in other areas, the ATMs were mostly without cash. Shivraj Rawat, a Doon resident, said, “The situation is really bad because in many ATMs there is no security guard for past three days which means there is no currency in ATMs.”The cash-crunch has panicked not just households but also shopkeepers who deposit their weekly sales in their bank account. “Cash deposits of petrol pump owners, shopkeepers and in some cases even schools, and other educational institutes has dipped,” said a bank official, on condition of anonymity.Another Dehradun resident, Indiver Saral, said, “In my bank, everyone was told to wait for two hours for withdrawal of more than Rs 1 lakh. The ATMs in Nehru Colony had no money which worsened the situation.”Of the 724 ATMs across six districts of Kumaon, around 500 have been running dry since the past three days. T H Rawat, a government bank official, said, “Cash flow has dropped and people are also not depositing money in banks. We are doing as much as we can.”Gaurav Pandey, a government employee, said, “I have been making payments through cheques only.”Vaibhav Singh, a tourist from Delhi, said, “I could not imagine such cash crunch in the ATMs of Nainital. Now, mostly I am using digital mode for transactions.”

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