The Reserve Bank today directed banks to adopt a uniform holidays calender to streamline cheque clearing system forCheque Truncation System (CTS) centres in New Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.

"The CTS centres in New Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai will adopt RTGS holidays as uniform holidays for the respective grid," RBI said in its directive.

The CTS based cheque clearing system ensures uniformity across all cheque forms issued by banks in the country.

Grid-based CTS has been in place in Chennai and Mumbai covering several states and union territories.

While, in New Delhi it is already in place since 2010 that encompasses CTS cheque clearing in the national capital and adjacent states.

However, all the state and union territories covered by the grid follow different schedule of holidays (on the basis of state calender).

"As local clearing houses are gradually being subsumed into the CTS, it has become necessary to devise a policy of uniform holidays so as to ensure the smooth functioning of grid-based CTS operations.

"Therefore, it has been decided to put in place the uniform holiday arrangement at the three CTS locations...with effect from October 7, 2013," RBI said.

Also, it said that CTS operations will be closed on such days when all the participating states in the grid are observing holidays, even though RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement) is working on such days.

RBI has further directed the president of respective CTS location to notify the list of such uniform holidays well in advance to enable the participating banks to put in place inward clearing processing infrastructure at the grid location. (Economic Times)

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