Locked out of car, Indian Bank CMD slams door on regional head

New Delhi: 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.

“...Our CMD could not enter the vehicle to proceed to guest house. CMD was made to wait for more than of hour (sic) at the airport and could leave in alternative taxi arranged without baggage,” the detailed suspension letter, sent by V Rama Gopal, Executive Director of the bank, reads.

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”.

On May 21, Panda sent another letter, this one addressed to the CMD himself, recalling how the latter had asked for a two-minute silence at a meeting of general managers and zonal managers on March 23 as respect for Panda’s dead wife. “When the same Chairman and Managing Director ordered for my suspension, I could fathom the gravity of the event leading to the decision.”

Despite several attempts, Bhasin could not be contacted for a reaction. The CMD’s office staff declined to put him on the phone and dismissed the issue as an “internal matter” of the bank. The Chennai-based corporate communications manager of the bank also declined to comment.

Source: Financial Express