Though the two-day long nationwide strike went off peacefully in the region, citizens had to experience a harrowing time as the strike badly hit basic services like transport, banking to name a few even on Thursday.

Commuters faced a tough time to reach their destinations on time as the public transport buses remained off the roads. Among others, long distant travellers were reported to be worst sufferers as they could not get buses for cities like Delhi, lucknow and even many other hill destinations from here. Only roadways buses are allowed to ply on long distant routes, particularly in plains.

At the same time, even to reach their destinations in local areas, commuters had to either hire private vehicles and had to pay more than the existing bus fares.

"I have to go to Bhowali. Since the public transport buses are off the roads, the private motorists are charging just double than the existing bus fares," said Sambhu Dutt, a commuter.

"We have been waiting here for the past three hours. let us see how long it takes us to reach our destination now," he added.

Following the disrupting transport services for two days, even the office goers who use public transport have not been able to reach their respective offices on time on Thursday.

Apart from the poor transport services, banking services also remained disrupted. Thus, the people could not do any bank related work even on Thursday. On account of this strike, a large number of ATMs were also found running short of cash, causing a lot of difficulties for the bank customers who could not withdraw cash from ATMs or banks in last few days.

Meanwhile, the strikers strongly criticised the 'anti-people' policies of the present UPA Government at the Centre. They were of the view that now the onus is on the Central Government whether it wants to invite the trade union leaders for talks on the issues of inflation, unemployment, corruption, labour problems to name a few issues or not.

"The two-day long strike passed off peacefully here on Thursday, but it had a huge impact," said KN Sharma, assistant general secretary of the Uttaranchal Bank Employees Union. "Now it is upto the Government to decide whether it wants to talk to the union leaders or not. The future course of action will be decided accordingly,"

he added.