Dry ATMs due to cash crunch in southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh had forced the banks to ship it from the Maharashtra and Kerala.

According to the Times of India report, the cash situation in these two states have been detoriating from past two months because of which, the banks have decided to get it from Maharashtra and Kerala for Telangana and for Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil nadu will supply.

SBI alone has 2,200 ATMs in these two states, of which 1,500 are operated and maintained by the bank and 700 are maintained by third parties with the cash being supplied by SBI. However, at present, only 1,400 to 1,500 of its ATMs are operational, the report claimed.

There is also a severe shortage of Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes as they are neither being supplied by the Reserve Bank of India since September 2017 to banks nor are they coming back from customers in the form of deposits, the report stated.

“With the approval of RBI we moved cash from Maharashtra and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala to Hyderabad to tackle the situation of accelerated withdrawals from ATMs and bank branches in January and February, but did not do so in March. We usually try to ensure that cash is available in ATMs at least 94 per cent of the time. Post demonetisation, following the cash crunch, we had taken several measures to ensure that ATMs had cash available for at least 85 per cent of the time but in January 2018, this came down to 70 per cent and is now hovering around 60 per cent,” State Bank of India’s (SBI) Hyderabad circle chief general manager Swaminathan J told TOI.

These states are facing scarcity of Rs 2,000 denomination notes.

“There are no deposits of Rs 2,000 notes by customers, and we have the least reserves of Rs 2,000 currency notes,” Swaminathan said, adding that Reserve Bank of India is primarily supplying Rs 200 and Rs 500 denomination notes.

Also read No continuous off for 5 days, Banks to remain open on Saturday

Meanwhile, starting today the banks would not be working on March 29 on account of Mahaveer Jayanti followed by a holiday on Good Friday, however, Saturday would be working for the banks.

On April 2, banks will observe an annual closing as the new fiscal would start.

Since, the banks would be closed, there are high possibilites that the ATMs would soon run out of money too.