CHENNAI: Coming down heavily on the Centre over withdrawing the legal tender of high denomination notes, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday termed the exercise as Tuglakian and a “brutal economic attack” on the people and the banking system in the nation.
Addressing the 28th annual national conference of the All India Bank Employees Association here, he said, “The Indian people and our banking system have been subjected to most brutal economic attack over the past couple of months.”
He alleged that a conscious effort was on to undermine the nationalised banks and the cooperative banks for the benefit of vested interests. Stating that the currency ban has shaken the core of the cooperative banking system, the “lifeline of rural India”, he said the cooperatives have suffered “collateral damage.”
“The collateral damage of the Tuglakian reform is that the cooperative banks were virtually forced to down their shutters,” he said adding this was particularly so in Kerala which in the last decade had resisted the Vaidyanathan Committee recommendations.
According to him the credit societies in Kerala, with a combined deposit of Rs 1.2 lak crore, were the strongest in the country. Referring to the Centre’s move to merge State Bank of India and its subsidiaries, against which a sustained movement is on in Kerala, the Marxist veteran said even prior to the attacks on banks through demonetisation, the assault on regional banks has begun.
“The Kerala Government passed a resolution in the Assembly asking the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to withdraw the decision to merge SBI and its subsidiaries. All the legislators voted in favour of the resolution but for the lone BJP member,” he said.
Vijayan recalled that the High Court of Kerala had issued notices to the Union Finance Ministry, RBI, SBI, SBT and the State Government on a petition seeking to stop the merger. Raising concerns over the adverse effect of the proposed merger, he said it would deprive job opportunities, besides leading to closure of half of the State Bank of Travancore branches in Kerala.
He said the attack on the regional, autonomous institutions was “part of a political design” to do away with federalism and build a ‘monolithic nation’ by submerging all “ethnic identities.” He also urged the workers and trade unions to continue to fight so that the effort of homogenisation of the hetrogenous society and
institution could be resisted.