There is light at the end of the tunnel as the efforts of Mukund Abhyankar’s new team to ease the beleaguered Rupee bank have gathered momentum. The Reserve Bank of India has meanwhile for the first time extended directions for a further period of six months till February 21, 2016. Until now, this period had always been for 3 months.
Readers would recall a report in the Indian Cooperative in which Minister Chandrakant Patil had offered NAFCUB President Mukund Abhyankar the mantle of the Rupee Cooperative Bank. He took over as Chairman of the three man Administrative Board. The other two are Pune based Janata Sahkari Bank Chairman Mr Arvind Khaledkar and Mr Sudhir Pandit- a chartered accountant.
Mr Abhyankar has asked for OTS (One-Time-Settlement) as a pre-condition, which was granted to him on July 8, 2015. Talking to Indian Cooperative Abhyankar said the bank has been able to recover Rs 45.92 crore from 99 cases. There is no CBS in the bank and we had to manually collect data of borrowers from different branches of the Rupee Bank branches spread across several districts in only 27 working days at our disposal. And the good news is 200 more borrowers have come forward to settle their dues under the OTS, which will help the bank realise another Rs 70 crore, added Abhyankar.
“Close to Rs 300 crore we are going to be recovered with the help of district administrations of Raigarh, Pune and Kolhapur. There are 95 properties in these districts whose mortgage papers are with the bank” he said.
Moreover, under the hardship cases we are also offering from Rs 50 thousand to one lakh for medical expenditure, education of children, marriage at home and on other grounds of hardship. The RBI was kind enough to authorize the Administrative Board to take a call without seeking prior approval of the regulator, underlined the Board Chairman.
Meanwhile, we have announced 13th September as a meeting date with the victim depositors. We wish to hear them out and help them. We are also investigating the fraud cases and I am confident that after six months the Rupee Bank could be made “mergeable”, an optimistic Abhyankar averred.
Thousands of mails keep landing on our desk asking about any good news after the Nafcub President had taken over. Lakhs of depositors are watching the development. The Rupee Bank has 6 lakh customers and 36 branches.