Many ATMs are cashless in NCR. Is cash going to poll-bound states?

Early on Sunday, February 12, a resident of Janakpuri in West Delhi tweeted a series of images, showing several ATMs he visited on the same day in Janakpuri’s District Centre were non-functional.

All through the weekend and continuing into Monday, National Herald observed quite a few tweets from citizens and journalists in the NCR complaining about cashless ATMs in their area. This despite the Finance Minister claiming in the Rajya Sabha on February 7 that “Not for a single day was the supply of currency inadequate".

Some of these tweets got trolled for complaining.

Why were, yet again, complainants being attacked on Twitter for simply saying they were unable to withdraw cash from ATMs? As most put up photos of these cashless ATMs, they clearly weren’t lying. National Herald reporters stepped out on Monday afternoon to check all four ATMs on the ‘Fleet Street’ stretch of Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Central Delhi. ICICI, HDFC, Central Bank and Syndicate Bank all have ATMs on this stretch. Not even one had cash. At least two of these ATMs would have cash at any given time, up till a week ago. So why the cash crunch redux at ATMs in Delhi-NCR?

Twitter provided a clue.