Govt to take over Mapusa Urban
Bank
Sandesh Prabhudesai
1 September 2002
With the new central co-operative societies
act making no provision to appoint state administrator,
the Reserve Bank of India as well as the Central Registrar
of Co-operative Societies are in dilemma, following
dissolution of the board of directors of Bank of Goa.
Headed by former union minister Ramakant
Khalap for over three decades, one of the oldest co-operative
bank of 1967 has voluntarily dissolved its BoD, requesting
the state government to appoint an administrator and
recover over 76 per cent of the NPA.
The bank, known popularly as the Mapusa
Urban Co-operative Bank but changed its name to the
Bank of Goa in 1997 after getting multi-state status,
is presently into deep losses due to the NPA factor,
in spite of having good amount of deposits.
Khalap thus recently resigned, requesting
information technology minister Francis D'Souza to take
over as the chairman. The very next BoD meeting then
unanimously decided to offer to resign enblock and request
the government to appoint the administrator.
"I will not allow the bank to go into
loss, by providing total government support in terms
of funds and recovery machinery", states chief minister
Manohar Parrikar. But he is stuck up as the new act
does not provide appointment of the administrator, even
if the board resigns.
The RBI officials are thus rushing
down to Goa this week, following which the state government
officials are also meeting the central registrar in
Delhi, to plan out alternative strategy in such kind
of situations.
Meanwhile, Parrikar's party president
and the BJP legislator Laxmikant Parsekar has held Khalap
solely responsible for pathetic state of the bank. He
has demanded to prohibit Khalap from entering the bank
and seal all the documents, fearing tampering of files.
Though Parrikar claims Khalap cannot
tamper with any document, the chief minister has expressed
his own doubts regarding recovery of at least 80 per
cent of the NPA. He plans to conduct thorough inquiry
into it, while warning that nobody will be spared even
of criminal liability.
Khalap himself admits that the NPA
has been pending for almost 12 years while the mismanagement
is suspected to be around Rs 10 to 12 crore. Though
the former blames slump in the real estate market for
non-recovery, Parsekar holds Khalap responsible for
the fraud played on the depositors.
To bring out the bank from bankruptcy
in three years, Parrikar is planning to deregister Goa's
most prestigious co-operative bank from the multi-state
status, provide funds and move into action even by attaching
properties of all the defrauders.
But the main problem right now is to
find a solution to bring it under state control, as
the new act is totally silent on it while neither the
RBI nor the central authorities have any clear guidelines
in this regard.
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