Only senior citizens can exchange old notes at banks tomorrow.

Banks across India will only serve senior citizens in exchanging scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on Saturday, officials said on Friday.

Though banks will be open, they will function during normal working hours and cater primarily to their customers.

“For the last 10 days, bank employees have been totally occupied handling the demonetisation (rush). We have decided to give them some relief,” said K Unnikrishnan, the acting CEO of Indian Banks’ Association.

Employees have been working long hours since banks opened after a day’s break following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise announcement to scrap high-value currencies on November 8.

The government’s move sparked chaos and confusion across the country, with millions of consumers queued outside banks and ATMs to change a limited number of old notes for new ones or withdraw cash.

Rajiv Rishi, the chairman of the association, confirmed that banks will not be doing any exchange on Saturday, but said senior citizens will not be turned away.

“All other services at banks will be operational and tomorrow (Saturday) we will complete our pending work,” he told ANI.

Meanwhile, R Venkatachallam, the general secretary of All India Bank Employees Association, said: “There is an acute shortage of cash...indelible ink is not available at most of the branches.”

The government has decided that banks will mark with indelible ink the fingers of people exchanging old currency at counters to stop them from coming back repeatedly and choking queues.

Source:- Hindustan Times.