Pandit has urged the Union Finance Minister to speed up the process of resolution and to have a pragmatic approach towards the issue. (File Photo) Days after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) struck down the merger proposal of the Rupee Cooperative Bank with the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, administrator of the bank Sudhir Pandit met Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking an early resolution to the bank’s issues. Pandit has urged the minister to speed up the process of resolution and to have a pragmatic approach towards the issue, said his press statement.
Since 2013, the Pune-headquartered Rupee Cooperative Bank has been under the direction of the RBI. The then board of directors of the bank was superseded by RBI due to mounting bad loans. The board of administrators has been unsuccessful in their attempts to merge the bank with the state cooperative bank despite multiple proposals.
The banking instructions issued by RBI has meant lakhs of depositors are not able to withdraw their money from the bank. While 99 per cent of the depositors would have their funds covered by insurance as their deposits are within the Rs 5 lakh limit, those who have higher deposits would lose out in case the bank is liquidated.
Pandit said he met the Union finance minister along with Pune MP Girish Bapat and Bhalchandra Kulkarni, publicity in charge of Sahakar Bharati. “I urged her to kindly use her good offices for early resolution of the issues of century-old Rupee Coop Bank which is under All-Inclusive Directions (AIDs) of RBI for the last eight years and whose agonised depositors are waiting for a solace. I also humbly emphasised that not a rigid but a pragmatic approach and innovative measures are needed to address this chronic issue which may have cascading effects on the entire urban cooperative bank sector,” he said.
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