About 450,000 staff of public and private banks in India went on strike Wednesday as a show of their opposition of the government's planned merger of public sector banks, the Economic Times of India reports.

Services were either partially or totally paralysed at 27 state-run banks and about the same number of private banks the entire day in a nationwide work stoppage organised by the All India Bank Employees Association and the All India Bank Officers Association, the news service said.

"These mergers are not in national interest. It does not only amount to job loss, it also hampers banking services for small customers like agri business and SMEs," Ragen Nagar, the national president of AIBEA, was quoted to have said.

"We want an extension of public sectors bank, not a merger," he added.

Industry body ASSOCHAM had earlier called for a consolidation of banks in order to boost global competitiveness.

According to the Times of India, Bank of India was among the banks that showed a skeletal staff manning the branches, as around 80 per cent of its employees are AIBEA-affiliated. The other affected institutions included the MICR centre, which is run by Punjab National Bank.

Bank of Baroda and Canara Bank, however, carried on as usual, because its staff were members of other unassociated unions. Major banks in Mumbai, the country's financial hub, also operated smoothly.