Reserve Bank of India’s Central Board Director Satish Marathe will deliver the 3rd Ekanath Thakur Memorial Lecture today at Swatantryaveer Savarkar Sabhagriha, Mumbai. Last year it was SBI chairperson Smt. Arundhati Bhattacharya who had delivered the lecture.
The topic of this year’s lecture is “The Present and Future of UCBs in India”. Several eminent dignitaries of the UCB and Credit Co-op societies are expected to attend the lecture. “I expect more than 500 participants”, claimed Gautam Thakur the current Chairman of Saraswat Bank who is the prime mover of the event.
Saraswat Bank has instituted the Memorial Lecture in recognition of its late chairman Ekanath Thakur’s visionary leadership and his monumental contributions to urban cooperative banks in general and Saraswat Bank in particular.
The inaugural Ekanath Thakur Memorial Lecture in 2016 at Swatantryaveer Sawarkar Sabhagriha, Shivaji Park, Mumbai was delivered by Shri Mohan Bhagwat, RSS Chief who is said to have enjoyed personal relationship with Late Eknath Thakur.
Thakur had been a Rajya Sabha MP from 2002-2008 and had also been the director of several public and private sector banks. He was a Shiv Sena leader and took over as the Chairman of Saraswat Bank in 2001. Indian Cooperative had chance to interview him on a number of occasion.
Known as SBI of urban cooperative banking sector Saraswat Bank has a total business mix of about Rs 58 thousand crore. Today, it is spread across six States – Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.