Bank Strike in March 2020: Two major bank unions — All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) — have announced a nation-wide bank strike. Their bank strike date is 27th March 2020. They have called this bank strike opposing the megabank mergers approved by the government on Wednesday, said a top leader of AIBEA.

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Informing about the bank strike date and the reason for going on bank strike CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary at AIBEA said, "Banks themselves face problems due to huge pile of bad loans. While the public sector banks made a total gross profit of Rs 150,000 crore for the year ended March 31, 2019, because of total provisions towards bad loans, etc. amounting to Rs 216,000 crore, the banks ended in a net loss of Rs 66,000 crore."

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"Can anyone believe that the merger of banks will result in the recovery of the huge corporate bad loans? Rather, as we have observed after the merger in State Bank of India (SBI), bad loans in SBI has gone up. The same risk is facing these banks now," Venkatachalam added.

According to Venkatachalam, the two bank unions — AIBOA and AIBEA — have planned series of protests this month peaking with the strike on March 27.

After the Bank of Baroda merger in SBI last year, the government has announced the merger of 10 other banks which simply means that six banks - Andhra Bank, Allahabad Bank, Corporation Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Syndicate Bank and United Bank of India will be closed down, he said.

According to Venkatachalam, the number of banks in the USA with just 323 million population is far more than banks in India with a population of 1.35 billion. India is not overbanked. There is no need for consolidation. (With inputs from IANS)