In a fresh development surrounding the Bengaluru-based Sri Guru Raghavendra Sahakara Bank, the victims of the multi-crore cooperative scam and the Congress have demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe. TNM has earlier reported how the scam that broke in January 2020 has put many senior citizens in despair with their life’s worth of savings locked up with the bank. Since then the scam has been probed by various state and union government agencies but provided no relief to most victims. Congress’s first involvement in the issue incidentally comes close to the heels of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s assurance in solving the depositor’s woes. Until now, Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya (incidentally the local MP) had been talking to the affected depositors and had assured help from the union government over the matter.
“We have heard that a lot of unsecured loans were given by the bank. After the RBI probed the issue, they came across certain collaterals which have been attached with the bank as securities and those too have been frozen along with the bank. We now firmly suspect that there is a malicious attempt to delink these properties at the behest of local politicians,” Dr Sankara Guha Dwarakanath, General Secretary of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee Doctors Wing, told TNM
He added, “More importantly the audit report which was promised is nowhere in the picture. But the local MLA and MP (Ravu Subramanya and Tejasvi Surya) are cleverly ignoring the issue.” He said if the audit report is not released in a time bound banner, the party will hold a protest against the Reserve Bank of India.
Over the past 19 months, depositors have been allowed to withdraw Rs 1 lakh only. The demand for the CBI probe by the Congress comes as the state government appointed administrator of the bank has failed to furnish audit reports as earlier promised. In a meeting with the depositors, Sitharaman on July 2 had said that she will request the RBI to expedite the matter proceedings after the administrator submits the audit report.
A co-ordinator of Sri Guru Raghavendra Sahakara Bank Depositors Forum also said the demand for a CBI probe is important as many of the bank’s wilful defaulters have close ties with the ruling party and also includes one MLC. He demanded urgent intervention from the authorities so that a minimum amount of money is given to the depositors who are solely dependent on the interest from the banks. He added, “We also want the authorities to publish the details of the defaulters for the public as it has been done in many other scams.”