Outright rejecting Congress party’s charges as baseless and a political vendetta, NABARD has come out with facts and figures to prove that no hanky-panky was involved in the exchange of old notes during the five days after demonetization in Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, one of whose Directors happens to be BJP President Amit Shah.
Calling it a pride of co-op banks in the country, Nabard clarifies that on the directions of the Supreme Court of India, both RBI and Nabard verified KYC compliance in the accounts into which the demonetized notes were deposited in Ahmedabad DCCB and nothing amiss was found.
It bears recall that in the wake of the RTI revelation that the Ahmadabad District Cooperative Bank netted the highest deposits among such co-op banks, the Congress Party saw a political opportunity and called demonetization a BJP plan to convert black money into white. It also accused Gujarat in general and Ahmedabad District Co-op Bank in particular of being ahead of all the others in the scam.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala alleged on Friday that demonetisation carried out by the Narendra Modi government the “biggest scam in Independent India” was to convert black money into white and the maximum deposits in cooperative banks in just five days were in the BJP-ruled states, mainly Gujarat.
In a rebuttal of the charges, NABARD said in a press release on Friday “Incidentally, demonetized notes presented in the DCCBs of Maharashtra were higher than those deposited in Gujarat, followed by DCCBs in Kerala.”
It further explained that of the total 16 lakh accounts with the Ahmadabad DCCB, deposits and exchanges were made only by 1.60 lakh customers i.e. 9.37% of the total deposit accounts. Of these, less than Rs. 2.5 lakh were deposited in 98.66 % of the accounts in which deposits/ exchanges were made.
“Of the total accounts with the bank, it was only in 0.09% accounts where above Rs. 2.5 lakh were deposited. The average deposit amount in Ahmedabad DCCB was Rs. 46,795 which was lower than average per depositor in 18 DCCBs of Gujarat. During this intervening period, 1.60 lakh customers of the bank deposited/ exchanged demonetized notes aggregating to Rs.746 crore which was only about 15 % of total deposits of the bank”, the release said in a point by point rebuttal.
It also said that NABARD had conducted 100 % verification in Ahmedabad DCCB which revealed that the bank had complied with all the KYC Guidelines of the RBI while accepting the demonetized notes. In fact, the average amount of demonetized notes deposited by the customers of the bank has been lower than that of other banks, Nabard added.
“Based on the satisfactory verification of demonetized notes held by concerned DCCBs across India, including Ahmedabad and Rajkot, RBI accepted the demonetized notes held by these DCCBs. The RBI gave necessary credit in the accounts of DCCBs concerned”, Nabard underlined.
Nabard also chose this occasion to laud the role being played by Ahmedabad DCCB saying “with total business levels of over Rs.9,000 crore, it is one of the top ten DCCBs of the country and had recently been awarded for the best performance by the Federation of the Cooperative Banks.”
“The farmer friendly bank has adopted technology to the core to enhance ease of doing banking to farmers and thus won the Best bank awards from NABARD for Technology Adoption and Financial Inclusion for the year 2015-16 and 2016-17.
The bank has consistently maintained high profitability and zero Net NPA, which enables it to win ‘A’ class Audit rating for last consecutive five years, Nabard concluded.