When the news of UCBs being reprimanded by the RBI is hogging the media headlines every other day, CEO of the Delhi based Indraprastha Sehkari Bank, Rajeev Gupta is a happy man after having earned a net profit of Rs 2 crore.
The Bank has five branches in the national capital Region and soon it will begin providing debit card services to account holders, said a proud Gupta in an exclusive interview with Indian Cooperative.
”The Bank is providing CBS, RTGS, NIFT facilities to its account holders and members. Each year we are giving 14% dividend to our members. Presently, the bank has 10,500 members” Rajeev Gupta informed.
Talking about the change of guard in Delhi last year, the CEO said ”We had high hopes from Prime Minister Modi because he comes from Gujarat where the cooperative movement is very strong. We thought that since Modi built Gujarat and strengthened co-operative movement there; he will do so in Delhi too but so far we are only waiting”.
Gupta is proud of the fact that RBI has never punished the UCB or ever issued directions. But he said ” we are not providing loans to our directors, but the RBI should remove this restriction from directors of the cooperative banks as they play a key role in the banks’ development” he said.
His other demand to RBI included free hand and unlimited access to the community. He said ”as we are not able to work freely we have limited access to the community. RBI should free coop Banks and give them as much freedom as given to nationalized banks”.
Government should relieve cooperative banks of the income tax burden and TDS, the bank’s CEO urged. He said NAFCUB wrote many letters to the Union Finance Minister for the removal of income tax from cooperative banks and had meetings with the authorities in this regard but to no avail.
Indraprastha Bank has bagged several awards in the past and the CEO himself has been personally awarded the prize for Best cooperator.