BARIPADA: IN a novel protest, 30 stakeholders of Urban Cooperative Bank (UCB) of Baripada town on Wednesday slept on the road in front the bank for several hours demanding their deposited money back.
The stakeholders took the step after all their pleas to the bank and government officials regarding returning of the money fell on deaf ears.
According to Harekrushna Kar, Raghunath Behera, Prahallad Nanda and other agitators, thousands of stakeholders of the bank have been running from pillar to post to get their deposits back since 2012 after RBI cancelled UCB’s license citing financial crisis. The agitators alleged that though RBI fixed certain guidelines for refund of depositors’ money, no steps have been taken by the bank in the interest of the beneficiaries so far.
“Frustrated with the apathetic attitude of the bank authorities, Cooperation Minister as well as Chief Minister, whom we had approached on several occasions, we decided to stage a ‘sound sleep’ protest hoping that this would draw the attention of the officials concerned and we would get our hard-earned money back,” said Ashis Kumar Pattnayak and Bhagaban Samal.
Urban Cooperative Bank was one of the leading banks in Mayurbhanj district with three branches at Udala, Karanjia and Rairangpur. But, alleged political interference and huge loans led to its fall and Reserve Bank of Indian (RBI) fixed some guidelines asking it to refund depositors’ money.
As most of the stakeholders are senior citizens, who had deposited their retirement benefits with the bank hoping to get interest, they had to face several problems in getting their money back after the closure of the financial institution. The RBI cancelled the licence citing irregularities like fabricated entries under branch adjustment, interest receivable head, huge deficit in provisioning due to wrong asset classification and under reporting of Non-Performance Assets (NPA).
According to Bank Manger in-charge Amarendra Kar, around 75,000 stakeholders have their deposits with the bank. At present, the bank has net cash of `68 crore while `70 crore is required to refund the customers’ money. The issue can be immediately solved if the State Government intervenes, he added. Former district Collector Rajesh Prabhakar Patil also wrote to Cooperation Department to revive the bank but no measure has been taken yet.