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<h1>85 Days of Silence, a Ghost Loan, and Day-One Portal Closures: What Happened When My Family Battled a Public Sector Bank</h1>
<p>If you read government press releases or MSME policy dashboards, India’s credit landscape sounds seamless. You are told that algorithms approve collateral-free loans in minutes, that portals like JanSamarth eliminate human bias, and that oversight systems like CPGRAMS protect citizens when branches fall short.</p>
<p>None of that protected my family’s businesses when we walked into the Rash Behari Avenue Branch of Bank of India in Kolkata.</p>
<p>Over the past three months, I have watched a straightforward, pre-approved working capital facility turn into an administrative collapse. Our family runs two micro-enterprises: M/s Samaddar Enterprise and M/s Locus. What we experienced was not a minor customer service hiccup; it was an ordeal involving eighty-five days of deliberate delays, fees collected for work never performed, a ghost credit entry fabricated on national credit records, and a grievance system designed to wipe complaints off dashboards before resolving them.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Digital Approval That Sat on a Desk for 85 Days</h2>
<p>Our ordeal began in late May and early June 2026. Facing ongoing operational capital needs, we applied for top-up facilities under the central government’s sovereign Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS 5.0).</p>
<p>The technology worked exactly as advertised:</p>
<ul>
<li>On May 24, 2026, Samaddar Enterprise received formal digital approval on the JanSamarth portal for ₹1,60,000 against our existing ₹8,00,000 Cash Credit limit.</li>
<li>On June 05, 2026, Locus received approval for ₹4,00,000 against our ₹20,00,000 limit.</li>
</ul>
<p>Official Credit Appraisal Memoranda (CAM) were generated by the system, classifying both accounts as "Standard" assets without any operational defects. All the branch had to do was generate a Credit Guarantee Reference Number (CGPAN) on the portal, execute routine paperwork, and disburse the funds.</p>
<p>Instead, the files sat completely untouched.</p>
<p>For nearly three months, my family was dragged through endless rounds of bureaucratic runaround by the then Branch Manager, Mrs. Nudzrat Zaman, alongside credit desk officials Mrs. Samhita Chandra and Mr. Moinak. Every visit was met with dismissive delays: <em>"come back tomorrow," "it will be signed Monday,"</em> or <em>"the system is updating."</em></p>
<p>When we pressed for specific timelines, the staff turned hostile. We were shouted at in front of other customers. On one visit, we were forced to sit outside the manager’s cabin for nearly five hours without an acknowledgment, finally leaving late in the afternoon out of sheer physical and mental exhaustion. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Zaman left for an unnotified international vacation without delegating signing authority, completely freezing pending credit files at the branch.</p>
<p>The delay proved fatal to our loans. On August 18, 2026, the National Credit Guarantee Trustee Company (NCGTC) issued Circular 0961/NCGTC/ECLGS5.0 announcing that the ₹2.50 lakh crore sovereign cap had been exhausted.</p>
<p>Because branch officials sat on approved files for 85 days, our micro-enterprises were permanently locked out of the sovereign credit facility.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Review Trap and the Ghost "MUDRA Loan"</h2>
<p>When a new Branch Manager, Mrs. Rashmi Kumari, took charge, she acknowledged the disaster and attempted to salvage the situation by initiating an in-house Cash Credit limit enhancement.</p>
<p>That was when the branch raised another institutional barrier: <em>"We cannot process your enhancement because your Cash Credit accounts have overdue annual reviews."</em></p>
<p>I pulled our bank statements. <strong>Bank of India had debited full annual review charges from both Cash Credit accounts back in September 2025.</strong></p>
<p>The bank took our money, sat on the review for eleven months, and then used its own administrative backlog as a weapon to deny us credit. Even worse, branch officials refused to use standard administrative powers to grant a routine 30-day "holding-on" extension in Finacle—a standard tool meant precisely to prevent system locks on Standard accounts.</p>
<p>Then came the credit report shock.</p>
<p>When we checked our commercial credit profile on TransUnion CIBIL, we discovered that the branch had already booked and reported our undisbursed corporate facility as an <strong>active, funded "MUDRA Loan."</strong></p>
<p>Not a single rupee had ever reached our account. We had signed no loan agreement. Yet our commercial credit score plummeted, our borrowing exposure was artificially inflated, and outside lenders backed away because our profile showed active debt we never received. Booking an undisbursed corporate facility under the "MUDRA" head to boost Priority Sector Lending figures violates basic data integrity norms under the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Software Bugs and Clearing Deadlines</h2>
<p>Mrs. Rashmi Kumari did not hide from the problem; she tried to manually push our MSME renewal and enhancement through the bank’s digital Eplatform. But the technology failed her, too.</p>
<p>Under the "Facility" tab in the renewal module, the dropdown button for <strong>"Enhancement" was missing entirely</strong>.</p>
<p>The branch had to file an urgent IT ticket in the bank’s internal BMC Remedy system under <strong>Request ID: <code>REQ000002419092</code></strong> for Samaddar Enterprise (A/c <code>401530110000185</code>), copying Corporate Credit Department (Kolkata) and Head Office IT teams.</p>
<p>While that ticket sat in an IT queue, real-world business obligations did not pause. On Monday, August 31, I found myself sitting through college lectures with semester exams around the corner, staring at my phone and watching the clock tick toward the afternoon clearing deadline. Our supplier cheques were due. Between classes, I dialed the branch landlines—only to be met with an endless busy tone.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Illusion of Government Redress: Closed on Day One</h2>
<p>Running out of options, I had filed two statutory grievances on Saturday, August 29, through the Central Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) directly to the Department of Financial Services (DFS), Ministry of Finance.</p>
<p>By Monday evening, I saw how public sector dashboards protect their performance metrics. <strong>Both tickets were marked "Closed" within hours of the working week opening[span_0](start_span)[span_0](end_span)[span_1](start_span)[span_1](end_span).</strong></p>
<p>No funds were released. The CIBIL entry remained untouched. The BMC IT ticket remained unresolved. Instead, I received two automated emails from the bank:</p>
<p>The Chief Grievance Redressal Officer (CGRO) closed the ticket for M/s Locus (<code>DEABD/E/2026/0145660</code>) stating[span_2](start_span)[span_2](end_span):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>"In the above connection we have escalated matter with the concerned authority once issue is resolved we will update you accordingly. We regret for the inconvenience cause to you."</em>[span_3](start_span)[span_3](end_span)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, the Head Office team closed the ticket for Samaddar Enterprise (<code>DEABD/E/2026/0145643</code>) with this explanation[span_4](start_span)[span_4](end_span):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>"We have initiated a thorough enquiry into the specific issues raised in your complaint regarding the loan processing, account review, and CIBIL reporting. We are actively investigating the matter and will update you on the progress and resolution at the earliest possible."</em>[span_5](start_span)[span_5](end_span)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Under Central Government guidelines, a bank cannot close a grievance simply by stating that an internal inquiry is underway[span_6](start_span)[span_6](end_span)[span_7](start_span)[span_7](end_span). They closed the tickets on day one to prevent delayed cases from showing up on their compliance dashboards[span_8](start_span)[span_8](end_span)[span_9](start_span)[span_9](end_span). They claimed a statistical disposal while our business was left waiting[span_10](start_span)[span_10](end_span)[span_11](start_span)[span_11](end_span).</p>
<hr>
<h2>Accountability & Call to Action</h2>
<p>The acute distress, commercial sabotage, and financial strangulation our family has endured are not abstract system errors—they are the direct consequence of deliberate negligence, hostility, and gross administrative dereliction by former Branch Manager <strong>Mrs. Nudzrat Zaman</strong>, <strong>Mrs. Samhita Chandra</strong>, and <strong>Mr. Moinak</strong>.</p>
<p>Institutions do not fail in a vacuum; individual officers make conscious choices to stall pre-approved files, shout down citizens, fabricate credit bureau entries, and abandon operational duties. If any irreparable harm, commercial collapse, or personal crisis befalls my family or our enterprises, the sole culpability rests squarely on these named officials and the supervisory machinery that enabled them. True banking reform does not happen until individual officers are held personally, legally, and administratively accountable for the human lives and livelihoods they derail.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>To every micro and small business owner trapped in a similar institutional chokehold:</strong> Stop relying on verbal assurances. Audit your commercial credit reports every quarter, initiate immediate statutory disputes against phantom entries, and challenge paper closures on government portals. Share this post to ensure public sector lenders are held publicly accountable, and that micro-enterprises are never silently driven to the wall.</p>
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