BARIPADA: Thousands of customers of Urban Cooperative Bank here have been running from pillar to post to get their deposits since 2012 after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cancelled its licence citing financial crisis.They alleged that though RBI had fixed certain guidelines for refund of depositors’ money, no step has been taken by the bank in the interest of beneficiaries so far. The depositors have become frustrated after visiting the bank more than 100 times to withdraw their hard-earned money.
A retired Government employee Bhagabat Chandra Nayak said he had deposited Rs 30 lakh post-retirement, but could not withdraw the amount even for treatment of his ailing wife. “I was in urgent need of money when my wife was struggling with a disease at the hospital. She died as I failed to provide her better treatment due to lack of money,” Nayak said.
Another customer Subodh Kumar Sahu said he did not withdraw security deposit of Rs 30,000 after repaying a loan of ` five lakh. Set up on April 24, 1960, the bank was operating in Baripada with three branches at Udala, Rairangpur and Karanjia. In 2012, the licence of the bank was cancelled due to certain irregularities such as raising fabricated entries under branch adjustment, interest receivable heads, huge deficit in provisioning due to wrong asset classification and under-reporting of Non-Performing Assets (NPA).
Bank manager in-charge Amarendra Kar said around 75,000 customers have deposited their money at the bank. At present, the bank has net cash of Rs 68 crore, while about Rs 70 crore is required to refund the deposited money to customers. Some technical and managerial bottlenecks have posed hindrance to money refund. A letter of commitment from the State Government to the RBI is needed to solve the depositors’ problem, he added.
Former Mayurbhanj Collector Rajesh Pravakar Patil had written to the Cooperative Department to revive the bank. However, no measure has been taken as yet towards its revival.Devidutt Das, a member of Management Board, said, “We have drawn the attention of the Registrar of Cooperative Society (RCS), Odisha for greater interest of the depositors. But, no measure has been taken as yet. We hope the Government would take serious note of it at the earliest.”