PMC: Election backlash fear wakes up ruling parties
Sena demands merger
After the death of an account holder of the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, the ruling saffron alliance seems to have woken up. Keeping in mind the possible backlash from the depositors, who are largely of the Sikh community, in the upcoming assembly elections, the ruling parties are now promising actions.
While the Shiv Sena had urged the Reserve Bank of India to merge PMC with nationalised banks like Punjab National Bank or big private banks like HDFC, BJP has promised to follow it up with the central government to return all the money to depositors.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said he would seek the Centre’s help to ease the woes of PMC depositors.
In reply to a query on the bank after releasing the manifesto, Fadnavis said, “I have assured PMC bank depositors that I will go to Delhi once the model code of conduct (in force for the October 21 Assembly
polls) is relaxed to seek the Centre’s intervention. I will urge the union finance minister and other officials to use all possible ways to find a solution to their problem.”
“Some arrests have been made after the complaint was lodged with EOW. The property of accused has been seized, and eventually we will sell it to recover depositors’ money. We will take all steps to return depositors’ money,” he added.
“The bank has a multi-state licence, hence largely, the RBI has more control over it. However, we do not want to shrug off our responsibilities over such technical issues,” Fadnavis said.
Fadnavis pointed out that the Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had lodged a complaint and was probing the issue. Shiv Sena demanded a merger of PMC Bank with nationalised banks like Punjab National Bank or Bank of Baroda or private sector banks like ICICI or HDFC. This is in view of the inconvenience faced by the borrower and likelihood of contagion effect on the entire co-operative sector apart from a loss of trust in the banking system, Sena said.
The delegation met RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday. The delegation included Union Heavy Industries minister Arvind Sawant, Lok Sabha members Gajanan Kirtikar, Anil Desai, Rahul Shewale.
“RBI should give a nudge to one of these banks as done before in the case of merger of Global Trust Bank with Oriental Bank of Commerce, Sangli Bank with IDBI and Suvarna Cooperative Bank with Indian Overseas Bank and many more. We understand PMC’s main borrower HDIL has good quality of assets (land and buildings in Mumbai, Delhi and other tier 1 and 2 towns) which have been provided as collaterals to the loans taken from the bank. Besides, the bank owns most of its branch premises,” letter submitted by Shiv Sena stated.