Bank with Amit Shah as director collected highest amount of banned notes among DCCBs
Mumbai, June 21: A district cooperative bank, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah as director, netted the highest deposits among such banks of old ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes that were demonetised on November 8, 2016, according to RTI replies received by a Mumbai activist.
The Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB) secured deposits of ₹745.59 crore of the banned notes—in just five days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the demonetisation announcement. All the district cooperative banks were banned from accepting deposits of the demonetised currency notes from the public after November 14, 2016—five days after demonetisation—on fears that black money would be laundered through this route.
According to the bank's website, Shah continues to be a director with the bank and has been in that position for several years. He was also the bank's chairman in 2000. ADCB's total deposits on March 31, 2017, were ₹5,050 crore and its net profit for 2016-17 was ₹14.31 crore.
Right behind ADCB, is the Rajkot District Cooperative Bank, whose chairman Jayeshbhai Vitthalbhai Radadiya is a cabinet minister in Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's government. It got deposits of old currencies worth ₹693.19 crore.
Interestingly, Rajkot is the hub of Gujarat BJP politics—Prime Minister Modi was first elected from there as a legislator in 2001.
Incidentally, the figures of Ahmedabad-Rajkot DCCBs are much higher than the apex Gujarat State Cooperative Bank Ltd, which got deposits of a mere ₹1.11 crore.
"The amount of deposits made in the State Cooperative Banks (SCBs) and District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs)—revealed under RTI for first time since demonetisation—are astounding," Manoranjan S. Roy, the RTI activist who made the effort to get the information, told IANS.
The RTI information was given by the Chief General Manager and Appellate Authority, S Saravanavel, of the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD).
It has also come to light, through the RTI queries, that only seven public sector banks (PSBs), 32 SCBs, 370 DCCBs, and a little over three-dozen post offices across India collected ₹7.91 lakh crore—more than half (52%) of the total amount of old currencies of ₹15.28 lakh crore deposited with the RBI.
The break-up of ₹7.91 lakh crore mentioned in the RTI replies shows that the value of spiked notes deposited with the RBI by the seven PSBs was ₹7.57 lakh crore, the 32 SCBs gave in ₹6,407 crore and the 370 DCCBs brought in ₹22,271 crore. Old notes deposited by 39 post offices were worth ₹4,408 crore.
Information from all the SCBs and DCCBs across India were received through the replies. The seven PSBs account for around 29,000 branches—out of the over 92,500 branches of the 21 PSBs in India—according to data published by the RBI. The 14 other PSBs declined to gave information on one ground or the other. There are around 155,000 post offices in the country.
Fifteen months after demonetisation, the government had announced that ₹15.28 lakh crore—or 99% of the cancelled notes worth ₹15.44 lakh crore—were returned to the RBI treasury.
Roy said it was a serious matter if only a few banks and their branches and a handful post offices, apart from SCBs and DCCBs, accounted for over half the old currency notes. "At this rate, serious questions arise about the actual collection of spiked notes through the remaining 14 mega-PSBs, besides rural-urban banks, private banks (like ICICI, HDFC and others), local cooperatives, Jankalyan Banks and credit cooperatives and other entities with banking licenses, the figures of which are not made available under RTI," he said.
The SCBs were allowed to exchange or take deposits of banned notes till December 30, 2016—for a little over seven weeks, in contrast to district cooperative banks which were allowed only five days of transactions.
The prime minister during his demonetisation speech had said that ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes could be deposited in bank or post office accounts from November 10 till close of banking hours on December 30, 2016, without any limit. "Thus you will have 50 days to deposit your notes and there is no need for panic," he had said.
After an uproar, mostly from BJP allies, the government also opened a small window in mid-2017, during the presidential elections, allowing the 32 SCBs and 370 DCCBs—largely owned, managed or controlled by politicians of various parties—to deposit their stocks of the spiked notes with the RBI. The move was strongly criticised by the Congress and other major Opposition parties.
Among the SCBs, the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank topped the list of depositors with ₹1,128 crore from 55 branches and the smallest share of ₹5.94 crore came from just five branches of Jharkhand State Cooperative Bank, according to the replies.
The poorest of all the cooperative banks in the country is Banki Central Cooperative Bank Ltd in Odisha, which admitted to receiving zero deposits of the spiked currency.
Of the total 21 PSBs, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Maharashtra, Central Bank of India, Dena Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Punjab & Sindh Bank, Vijaya Bank, Andhra Bank, Syndicate Bank, UCO Bank, United Bank of India, Oriental Bank of Commerce, and IDBI Bank (14 banks)—with over 63,500 branches amongst them—did not give any information on deposits.
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What Trump did to Maduro, Modi has done to Nitish Kumar: Cong's Jairam Ramesh
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday took a swipe at the BJP over Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to move to the Rajya Sabha, saying what US President Donald Trump did to then Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now done to the JD(U) chief.
He also said that Kumar's decision to step down as chief minister is a betrayal of the mandate the people gave in assembly polls in November last year. Ramesh said the people of the state voted for Kumar's re-election and not for a BJP chief minister.
Ramesh's remarks came a day after JD(U) chief Kumar filed nomination papers for Rajya Sabha elections, marking a turning point in Bihar politics and virtually bringing the curtain down on his tenure as the state's longest-serving chief minister. The move has paved the way for a new government in the Hindi heartland state, likely to be headed by the BJP.
Expressing gratitude to the people of the state, Kumar had said on X, "For more than two decades, you have consistently placed your trust and support in me, and it is on the strength of that trust that we have served Bihar and all of you with complete dedication. It is the power of your trust and support that has enabled Bihar today to present a new dimension of development and dignity."
Asked about this major development in Bihar politics, Ramesh told PTI, "During the Bihar election campaign, Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, had said that Nitish Kumar would not remain chief minister for long because the BJP's aim was to remove him. Ultimately, that is what happened."
Kumar hasn't even been chief minister for four months in the present term and he's being removed, Ramesh said.
Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Modi and the BJP, Ramesh said, "What Trump did to Maduro, Modi ji has done to Nitish Kumar. This is a coup"
The US military had seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their Caracas home on January 3 in a stunning operation that landed them in New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.
On Kumar's move to the Rajya Sabha, Ramesh said, "This was inevitable. This is a betrayal of the people of Bihar and the mandate they gave."
The mandate wasn't to make a BJP chief minister, but to make Nitish Kumar the chief minister.
"It's possible that tomorrow, (Chandrababu) Naidu is brought here and made a minister, a coup can happen there too. There was a coup in Maharashtra too, the split the NCP and Shiv Sena... This is all the work of the 'G2'," Ramesh said.
He said the Congress just has six MLAs in Bihar but it will continue to raise the issues of the people and Kumar's move to Rajya Sabha is a "betrayal of the mandate".
The Congress on Thursday had said a "leadership coup and regime change orchestrated by G2" has taken place and is a "huge betrayal" of the mandate of the people.
