The RBI drains overnight liquidity with a 75,000 crore reverse repo
Victoria Shinder1 min readThe Reserve Bank of India announced on 21 September 2026 that it would conduct a Variable Rate Reverse Repo auction under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility on Tuesday 22 September: a notified amount of ₹75,000 crore, tenor one day, window 09:30 to 10:00, reversing on Wednesday 23 September. The reason given is "a review of current and evolving liquidity conditions". Operational guidelines are unchanged from the Bank's press release of 13 February 2020.
What it means
A reverse repo drains, it does not inject. The RBI is taking rupees out of the banking system overnight and paying for them at an auctioned rate. The instrument is used when the Bank judges there is more surplus liquidity in the system than it wants overnight call rates to sit on.
"Variable rate" is the informative half. In a fixed-rate window the price is set in advance; in a variable-rate auction banks bid, and the cut-off rate that emerges is a measurement of how badly the system wants to park cash. That number, published after the auction, is the thing to read — not the notified amount.
One-day tenor means this is steering, not policy. Overnight operations smooth the weighted average call rate towards the policy corridor. A change of stance shows up in the repo rate decision, not here.
⚠ An announcement of an auction is not a result. The amount actually absorbed and the cut-off rate come afterwards, from the Bank.