To bankers the bug seemed remote, like something that wouldn't happen to them. But with the millennium just six months away, and with consumers breathing down their necks, things are a bit too close for comfort.

This is what the doomsayers say: On January 1, 2000 one of two nightmare scenarios might be acted out -- some may earn interest at the bank's expense and others will end up losing interest. Still others might find out their names have been dropped from the list of account holders.

Most of the bank's daily transactions are carried out on operational systems working on date and time coordinates.

The old software and even hardware will only recognise the last two digits of the year.For example, when we enter a date into the computer, the format is: DD/MM/YY.

When the bank calculates interest or updates an account, the process of subtraction and addition takes place on a datewise basis.

On January 1, 2000, when computers are switched on, there is a chance that they might go haywire. The systems fails to understand the last two digits of the year, which is now 00. Interest of the past 100 years might be added to the consumer's balance or deducted from it.

According to National Association of Software and Service. Companies (NASSCOM) chairman, Dewang Mehta: ``Of the 65,000 banks in India 5,000 are computerised. He says 75 per cent of the work has been done to make them Y2K complaint. And they are expected to be 90 per cent Y2K complaint by the end of June.

To ensure that the banks do not lose business and economic mayhem does not take place, the Reserve Bank of India has set guidelines for the them.

Sunil Sharma, Service Delivery Manager, Standard Chartered Bank -- which hasfinished its process -- told The Indian Express: ``The RBI had set May 31 as the deadline for all the banks. But we have finished our work much before that.'' The third party auditing, however, remains to be done.

But its competitor, the Citibank is still working on it, but promise to complete the process very soon. An official from Citibank's Information Technology department told this paper: ``We run Y2K programmes every month to check compliance. The reports are sent to our regional head office in Singapore, from where we receive directions.'' Ninety per cent of the applications have been covered. This includes customer services and interest calculations.

And there is a bright side to the bug mania -- Indian banks are used to manual operations. And today despite computerisation, most banks still preserve their records on paper. This could in the end prove to be a boon for customers.