NABARD figures misleading

Mumbai, June 23: The National Bank for Agiculture & Rural Development (NABARD) had said in a statement on Friday that demonetised notes presented to district cooperative central banks (DCCBs) in Maharashtra were higher than those deposited in Gujarat, followed by Kerala. This statement, in essence, may be misleading. According to RTI information secured by Mumbai activist Manoranjan S. Roy, Maharashtra’s 30 DCCBs (out of total 370) secured deposits of Rs 3,985 crore worth of banned notes averaging to Rs 132.83 crore per bank. But, neighbouring Gujarat’s 18 DCCBs were way ahead in average terms in securing deposits of old notes worth Rs 3,640 crore — or an average of Rs 202 crore per DCCB.

What is important is the average amount garnered by each DCCB, not the total amount in the state. In average terms, Gujarat tops the list followed by Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in India, as per the RTI documents released earlier by NABARD. Next to Gujarat in the list is Kerala with 13 DCCBs getting deposits of Rs 2,094 crore, averaging to Rs 161 crore per DCCB. It is followed by Karnataka’s 20 DCCBs which got deposits of Rs 1,849 crore, averaging to Rs 92 crore per DCCB.

Tamil Nadu’s 22 DCCBs collected total deposits of Rs 1,514 crore, averaging to Rs 69 crore per DCCB. On Thursday, IANS had released a story, based on RTI replies to Roy, on how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB) — which has BJP President Amit Shah as one of its directors — collected the highest amount of Rs 745.59 crore among DCCBs in the country. This amount was collected within five days after the prime minister announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, 2016. The DCCBs were banned from depositing or changing old notes after the initial five-day window on fears that black money may be laundered through this route.

On Friday, the NABARD had defended ADCB saying that only 9.37 per cent or 1.6 lakh customers of the bank had deposited the total amount and the average deposit amounted to Rs 46,795 crore. Roy and others have expressed surprise at why NABARD was acting as “a spokesperson” for the Ahmedabad DCCB. “At this rate, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may be compelled to justify objectionable goings-on in big banks like Punjab National Bank or ICICI Bank. This is not a healthy trend for the country,” Roy said. (IANS)

Goyal ‘forced’ NABARD to issue statement: Congress

New Delhi, June 23: The Congress on Saturday alleged that Finance Minister Piyush Goyal had “forced” NABARD to issue a statement “to hide the demonetisation scam by BJP President Amit Shah” and demanded that audit reports, including those of NABARD, be made public. Accusing the BJP government of giving “patronage to scamsters”, the Congress also said that another bank fraud worth Rs 2,000 crore, by the D.S. Kulkarni (DSK) group of companies, had come to the fore in Maharashtra. He alleged that NABARD deliberately omitted its own RTI findings which reflected that a whopping Rs 3,118.51 crore worth of old notes were deposited within the first five days of demonetisaton in 11 Gujarat Co-operative Banks “closely associated” with BJP leaders. (IANS)