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Withdraw ordinance on cooperative banks: CPI(M)

The CPI(M) criticised the government for the “unilateral decision” to take over the supervision of 1,540 urban and rural cooperative banks through an ordinance and demanded its immediate withdrawal.

The party’s Polit Bureau said in a statement here that the decision was taken without consultations with the State governments which supervised the cooperative sector. “This is yet another attack on our country’s federal structure. Such over-centralisation is an assault on one of the basic features of our Constitution: federalism. This totally destroys the autonomy of the cooperatives,” the statement said.

These banks have 8.4 crore account-holders and ₹4.5 lakh crore in deposits. “It is clear that this BJP-led Central government is also eyeing this huge corpus of money to be siphoned off by it as it did with the RBI reserve fund earlier,” the party said.

The CPI(M) said the co-operative banks were the backbone of the agricultural sector. With the deposits now being available to be disbursed by the Central government, it was clear that the rich, with greater capacities to borrow, would benefit at the expense of the poor, the party said.

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