In the wake of a news report titled “Jharkhand: RoC dismisses CEO of State Co-op Bank; orders recovery” published on 7 May in Indian Cooperative, Abhay Kant Prasad, Chairman, Jharkhand State Cooperative Bank has given his statement in defense of Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, the dismissed CEO of JSCB.
Prasad said, “Last year with the consent of the board, we have asked Nabard to give the officer the position of CEO for the time being. Fulfilling our demand Nabard had given one of their officials on deputation for one year. The tenure of CEO is coming to end this month. The dismissed CEO was not directly appointed by the bank but he came on deputation in the bank”, he added.
“We have not appointed any person who is Retired or a relative of any board member and of me. Chaudhary is on deputation. It is wrong to say that he was appointed illegally in the bank as the CEO but was appointed by Nabard on the prescribed norms”, he said while defending the CEO.
The JSCB Chairman added that, as his (CEO) tenure is coming to an end now we are planning to release an advertisement for appointing the regular CEO in the Bank.
On the issue of drawing a hefty salary from the bank, Prasad said his salary was decided by the Nabard who is the monitoring authority for the state cooperative bank but some vested interests are trying to tarnish the image of the bank.
Meanwhile, the dismissed CEO of JSCB has denied the charges of drawing a hefty salary and called it a pre-planned decision of the state cooperative registrar to dismiss him from the position. Prior to being appointed as the CEO in the bank, he was assistant general manager in Nabard’s Ranchi office.
Denying all the charges Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, CEO, JSCB said, “It is wrongly said that I have drawn a huge salary from the bank. First of all, I used to receive the salary from Nabard not directly from the bank. My salary was around Rs 1.99 lakh excluding other allowances which were over 35k and the total salary is about Rs 2.40 lakh. Nabard used to pay salary including GST which is neither my money nor Nabard’s money”, he informed this correspondent on the phone.
Accusing the officials of the state registrar office, Chaudhary said, “In 2017, several officials of the cooperative department and the bank officials had done the fraudulent transaction of Rs 4.15 crore in the bank’s Seraikela Kharsawan district branch before the opening of the bank in the morning. We have CCTV footage where officials are clearly visible and the CID is doing a probe in the matter”.
“I received the dismissal letter through mail last Monday and received the hard copy on Tuesday at the office and on that day CID was scheduled to come to the headquarters. In a hurry, the state registrar officials dismissed me as they were in fear and wanted to hide their questionable adventures”, he said while accusing the officials of dismissing him in a pre-planned manner.
Besides, Chaudhary said, last year the bank had asked Nabard to give the officer the CEO position. Later, Nabard asked its officials to apply for the position where I was the only candidate who had applied for the position because I was aware of it. And I was appointed on the prescribed criteria, said Chaudhary.
Meanwhile, colleagues lauded the efforts of Chaudhary in bringing the bank back on track. Talking to Indian Cooperative they said, he is an honest man whose presence dissuades officials of the bank from doing any fraud in collusion with the state registrar officials.