The Chairman Dilip Kelkar has met the RBI officials in Ahmadabad to request leniency. Earlier on Friday RBI cancelled its licence and asked it to stop all financial transaction.
Kelkar says that RBI’s order has come at a time when Bank’s board was making serious attempt to revive itself. Given some more time we may hay have clicked the deal.
Its earlier effort to merge with Saraswat Cooperative bank failed as its employees union was sore point in the negotiation.
Ananya Cooperative bank happens to be the oldest cooperative bank not only in India but in whole of Asia. Its closure is a big defeat of Indian cooperative movement. Some Board members having selfish interest have ensured that the bank is not brought to revival,according to insiders.
RBI has given August-end deadline to come up with concrete steps for its revival. They added that the final blow came when the bank’s efforts to organise financial back-up from a private company did not get support from a section of board members. The sources also charged that some of the board members had deliberately absented themselves from the meeting at which the crucial decision on generation of funds was to be taken.
RBI had put the bank under Section 35(A) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, in September 2007 for not being able to reduce its non-performing assets (NPAs). With 29,000 members and over 1 lakh depositors Bank can indeed bounce back given a proper leadership.