The Anyonya Cooperative Bank in Gujarat has been tottering on the brink of collapse since plans to merge it with other cooperative banks have come to grief. All its movable possessions are now going under the hammer as a part of the liquidation process.
According to liquidator J.R.Charel, putting movable assets up for sale would happen before disposing the bank’s immovable assets.
As the bank could not recover loans worth crores of rupees in 2007, it began sinking into crisis. The accumulation of NPA had a crippling effect on its economy. A lot of efforts were put in to salvage the bank by merging it with other cooperative banks but none of the efforts succeeded.
A merger proposal with Maharashtra Saraswat cooperative Bank , for example, has also fallen through for lack of focused negotiations.
Sources say, most of the depositors’ claims save a few have been settled and the RBI is being kept posted. The total amount involved in settling the depositors’ claims was Rs. 57 crore and the process of settling claims spanned long three years , add the sources.
It bears repetition that the beleaguered bank was once regarded as one of the most successful cooperative banks in this part of the world.