Chennai, July 13 - Thanks to a goof-up on their part that led to a cheque bouncing, officials of a nationalised bank are now forced to negotiate with a state utility to accept cheques from one of its customers.

P.N. Venkataraman, a customer of the State Bank of Mysore (SBM), recently discovered that a cheque for Rs.1,330 he had deposited with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) had bounced.

The reason SBM gave: 'Customer signature not scanned'.

Venkatraman was told the bank was shifting to a system under which signatures of account holders were scanned and uploaded, and that his signature had not been scanned.

'I have been operating the account with SBM's Shastri Nagar branch for the past 34 years. It is strange the bank bounced the cheque on a funny pretext,' Venkataraman told IANS.

Fearing disconnection of power supply to his home, Venkataraman went to the TNEB office where he was told that as per the board rules, people whose cheques have been dishonoured are blacklisted and that no cheques accepted from them for the next three months.

Not only that, Venkataraman had to pay return charges and penalty for reconnection of electricity.

Venkataraman called SBM's zonal office to seek the assistant general manager's or his deputy's intervention in the matter.

He said a woman who declined to identify herself by name and merely said she was a chief manager, gave a patient hearing.