India Post is planning to introduce ATMs which will facilitate customers who have deposits in post office saving accounts to withdraw money. The postal department is working to get all the 1,50,000 post offices in the country networked under the project called ‘India Post-2012’. The Rs 5,000 crore will be implemented in five different phases. In the first phase of the project, six head post offices in Kerala will be networked. Once this is done, all the account holders in the post offices will be able to transact money and carry out other banking operations at any of the networked post offices. In the second phase, 112 post offices, which will include head post offices and sub-post offices, will be networked by the end of this year. A senior officer of the department in Kerala said this is the initial stage in the process of shifting towards banking and once completed the 150-year-old India Post will transform into banks for the people. ATM facilities will also be made available at all the networked post offices at the earliest. On a pilot basis, an ATM has started operations at the Head Post Office at T Nagar in Chennai.
