MUMBAI, April 10 (Reuters) - The Reserve Bank of India has announced a cash withdrawal operation to remove excessive liquidity from the banking system.

The RBI will conduct a seven-day variable rate reverse repo auction for 2 trillion rupees ($21.58 billion) later in the day.

Banking system liquidity surplus was around 4.5 trillion rupees as of Thursday, or about 1.8% of deposits in the banking system.

($1 = 92.6820 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Dharamraj Dhutia)