While the people in general are struggling hard to draw cash from ATMs, as most of them are not operational, air passengers at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad wondered when they get Rs 500 notes instead of Rs 100 notes from an ATM, last evening.

After knowing this, air travellers lined up at the ATM belonging to Kotak Mahindra Bank and in an hour as much as Rs 8 lakh was withdrawn from the machine. Surprising over this mad rush, the security staff made inquiries and informed the same to the bank’s officials. Bank officials rushed to the airport at around 9 pm and temporarily shut it down.

According to a security officer it started when a passenger withdrew Rs 2,500 and got one Rs 2,000 denomination note and five Rs 500 denomination notes instead of five Rs 100s. So, he got Rs 4,500 instead of Rs 2,500 with the technical error in the machine.

As the news spread over the airport, air travellers lined up at the ATM for withdrawals. Bank officials claims that it was due to was a mistake by the outsourcing staff of the off-site ATM maintenance agency. They had mistakenly kept Rs 500 denominations in the Rs 100 slot/

However, the ATM maintenance agency refused to shoulder the blame, saying that the mistake was made by engineers who re-calibrated the machine. According to them it is not possible to keep currency of higher denominations in the slot allocated to lower denominations.

Now, the bank officials are making efforts to recover the `excess’ amount withdrawn by air passengers. The bank officials gets the ‘General Print’ of transactions from the ATM maintenance agency. Based on the details of the bank customer, a bank officer said that they will inform other banks in cases where the customer is not from the home bank. They debit the amount from the customer’s account through ‘debit raise’. If the customer’s account is not having any balance, his account will show as minus balance with the debit.