The Indian Banks' Association, however, claimed the strike partially affected the banking operations. The Shiv Sena controlled Bank Karmachari Sena did not participate in the strike in Maharashtra. The strike was total in Delhi and Calcutta, union sources said.

Bank Of Baroda chairman K Kannan said that the strike was near total with some banks in Maharashtra witnessing presence of skeletal staff. BoB would save about Rs 3 crore on account of wage cut of its striking employees for two consecutive days. "The loss of the banking system would essentially be the hardship it would cause to the thousands of employees," Kannan said.

Thousands of bank employees gathered in south Mumbai and took out a mammoth procession towards Azad Maidan where arally was held. Bank union leaders Suresh Dhopeshwarkar (Aibea), Arvind Mahajan (Aiboc), Umesh Naik (Ncbe), PK Menon (Aiboa), K K Nair (Inboc), S N Joshi (Nobo) and Arvind Nachane who addressed the gathering criticising the rigid attitude of the IBA which "forced them to go on the strike".

IBA chairman AT Paneerselvam told The Financial Express, "The pay commission's recommendations (of high wage hike) have been implemented from the budgetary allocations but the wage of the bank employees have to come from the balance sheets of the respective banks. The managements are ready to go on the offensive now that the employees have gone ahead with their strike. Negotiations are successful only if both the parties are willing to be reasonable."

The secretary of the Maharashtra region of Aiboc, Arvind Mahajan, said "The strike was total all over the country. Bank employees are unanimous in their belief that if thousands of crores of money is spend on provisioning, writing off sticky loans, the managementshould consent to give us our legitimate demands."

While ridiculing the misleading propaganda of IBA to the proposed wage revision, the employees unions said the entire blame for the banking industry being in a bad shape has to be laid on the doorsteps of IBA and the top management of banks, government and the Reserve Bank of India for their failure in not initiating expeditious measures like legal reforms and activating of debt recovery tribunals.