State Bank of India will grant special leave of two days to its employees as reward for having taken additional stress since November 8 when demonetisation was announced.

Employees would be able to avail this leave any time until March 2018, said SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya in Mumbai on Wednesday.

“Our employees will get rewarded, I am sure. We are looking into what can be done. We have already given overtime wherever it is due.”

On the issue of new currency notes being diverted by some bank employees, Bhattacharya clarified that in any system there would be a few bad examples.

She observed that such incidents of ₹100-200 crore being diverted to a select few had created doubts in the minds of people. The banking sector had dispensed ₹7 lakh crore worth of money in the system during this period. But those who are guilty of such malpractices will be dealt in accordance with law, she said.

Bankers have been going about their job silently and without being given credit for implementing such a challenging task, she said.

They had been putting in late hours and many could not go home in the initial few days, she said.

The SBI chief said that there were checks and balances in place but if checks were tightened further, banks would not be able to serve their customers.

SBI was using analytics to ascertain the number of notes received by the bank versus the number issued to customers, besides reporting suspicious transactions on a daily basis, Bhattacharya said.

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