Car locking incident : Indian Bank executive reinstated due to media pressure

The senior executive of Indian Bank, who was suspended for accidentally locking in the keys of a car that left his boss stranded at the Mumbai airport for an hour, was on Wednesday reinstated.

The Indian Express reported the matter yesterday and all queries to various officials, corporate communications department and CMD secretariat by www.psuindia.in failed to evoke any response from the bank authorities.

The Mumbai Zonal Manager of the bank, Banabihari Panda, has been reinstated but is learnt to have been transferred to the Chennai headquarters of the PSU bank.

Panda, however, is still not out of the woods as an inquiry into the locking incident is still being carried out by the bank. As reported by this newspaper, he was charged with keeping the bank CMD waiting for over an hour as the keys of the waiting car got locked in when luggage was being loaded.

A detailed letter announcing the suspension held Panda, who has 34 years of experience as a banking officer, responsible for failing to provide “minimum basic courtesies” to the bank’s CMD T M Bhasin on his arrival at Mumbai airport from Chennai last Thursday night. Panda had apologised for the incident, explaining to the Executive Director of the bank in a May 20 letter that the car got locked accidentally.

Being locked out with car keys inside may be a common mistake, but a senior executive of a public sector unit (PSU) bank could pay with his job for it — for the person left stranded was his boss.

The Mumbai Zonal Manager of Indian Bank, Banabihari Panda, has been suspended for failing to provide “minimum basic courtesies” to the bank’s Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) T M Bhasin on his arrival at Mumbai airport from Chennai last Thursday night.

The charge faced by Panda, who holds the rank of General Manager, is that he kept the CMD waiting at the airport for over an hour as the keys got locked in when luggage was being loaded into the car.

Panda has apologised for the incident, explaining to the Executive Director of the bank in a May 20 letter that the car got locked accidentally, resulting in the CMD being stranded for “about 25 minutes”. In the detailed reply, Pande also writes that he made alternative arrangements, hiring a taxi and arranging “two sets of new dhotis and towels” for Bhasin through a friend, and later running around till late in the night to organise a duplicate key. Finally, he says, he was able to deliver Bhasin’s luggage at the guest-house by 1 am.

The manager cites his 34 years of experience as an officer and pleads that he has always been sincere in his duties, and never took even the matter of the locked keys casually.

Panda and a junior executive had gone to the airport to receive the CMD on Thursday night. While they were overseeing loading of Bhasin’s luggage into his car, the vehicle got locked. The keys were in the ignition as the air-conditioning was on.

By failing to extend “minimum usual basic courtesies” to the CMD, the suspension letter says, Panda had “failed to discharge” his duty. The letter also accuses Panda of not handling things properly and displaying behaviour “unbecoming of official in the Top Management cadre of the Bank”.

Source : Indian Express with inputs from www.psuindia.in