Bank of Baroda chairman K Kannan said that the strike was near total with some banks in Maharashtra witnessing presence of skeletal staff. BoB would save about Rs 3 crore on account of wage cut of its striking employees for two consecutive days. "The loss of the banking system would essentially be the hardship it would caue to the thousands of employees," Kannan said.

Thousands of bank employees gathered in south Mumbai and took out a mammoth procession towards Azad Maidan where a rally was held. Bank union leaders Suresh Dhopeshwarkar (Aibea), Arvind Mahajan (Aiboc), Umesh Naik (Ncbe), PK Menon (Aiboa) K K Nair (Inboc), S N Joshi (Nobo) and Arvind Nachane who addressed the gathering criticising the rigid attitude of the IBA which "forced themto go on the strike".

IBA chairman AT Paneerselvam told The Indian Express, "The pay commission's recommendations (of high wage hike) have been implemented from the budgetary allocations but the wage of the bank employees have to come from the balance sheets of the respective banks. The managements are ready to go on the offensive now that the employees have gone ahead with their strike. Negotiations are successful only if both the parties are willing to be reasonable."

The secretary of the Maharashtra region of Aiboc, Arvind Mahajan, said "The strike was total all over the country. Bank employees are unanimous in their belief that if thousands of crores of money is spend on provisioning, writing off sticky laons, the management should consent to give us our legitimate demands."

While ridiculing the misleading propaganda of IBA to the proposed wage revision, the employees unions said the entire blame for the banking industry being in a bad shape has to be laid on the doorsteps of IBA and the topmanagement of banks, government and the Reserve Bank of India for their failure in not initiating expeditious measures like legal reforms and activating of debt recovery tribunals.

Forex, Money Markets Hit:

The first day of the nation-wide bank strike crippled the trading in the money and forex market.

According to dealers in the money and forex market, the market makers like the SBI, BoI and other nationalised and foreign banks were absent in the market. "On the forex front, no trading was done at interbank level. Activities in the forex market were confined only one or two deals struck between corporates," said a dealer from a foreign bank.

In the money market, activities came to a stand still as most banks and primary dealers had covered their CRR requirement much ahead of the reporting Friday. "Most banks and primary dealers bought and sold securities on Wednesday for Saturday and Monday value," dealers said.

Meanwhile, the Reserve bank of India's clearing house was functional onThursday. The central bank received and accepted one application for a fixed rate four-day repo worth Rs 40 crore in the Government of India dated securities at 8 per cent as against the previous day's mop-up worth Rs 18 crore.

According to forex dealers, most banks on Wednesday had covered their long positions anticipating the two-day bank strike and the union budget which will be presented on Saturday. "Not even a single interbank deal was struck on Thursday by banks. However, a few corporates were seen quoting between 42.57/58 against the dollar, unchanged from Wednesday's closing levels," said a forex dealer from a foreign bank.

Against the backdrop of the grim macro economic picture portrayed in the economic survey, banks bought dollars on behalf of corporates on Wednesday which pushed the rupee down to the low of 42.57/58 against the greenback. "At present, no demand is seen in the market as corporates have already covered their open long positions," dealer said.

All the nine primary dealers wereabsent form the money market on Thursday. However, a few deals were struck between 7.50-9 per cent. "A couple of banks having excess funds were lending in call market. However, there were no borrowers in need of funds," money market dealers said.