Charotar, Visnagar deposits to be 'repaid in 3 months'

The state government, which has prepared the claim details of the depositors of Visnagar Nagarik Sahakari Bank Ltd and Charotar Nagrik Sahakari Bank Ltd, is ready to hand over the details to the Reserve Bank of India, which in turn will forward the lists to the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation of India (DICGC).

Visnagar Nagrik and Charotar Nagrik are among the six co-operative banks which went bust in the last two years. The RBI had liquidated these banks, which have cumulative depositors of 6.4 lakh, a few days ago.

"The private agency which has been assigned to prepare the claim list of around 2.70 lakh depositors of Visnagar Nagrik Bank who have deposits up to Rs 1 lakh and 2.74 lakh depositors of Charotar Nagrik Bank having deposits of a maximum of Rs 1 lakh have prepared the claim-lists of the depositors. After verification and scrutiny by senior state government officials, the list will be handed over to RBI for filing insurance claim of the deposits with the DICGC. The list of Janta Co-Operative Bank, which has around 4,500 depositors in this limit, is also being prepared. The depositors' list of Welfare Co-Operative Bank and Nadiad-based Santram Co-operative Bank will also be finalised and filed for claims soon," Chudasma said on Tuesday.

Saying that the state government had no intention to liquidate any of the six urban co-operative banks, Chudasma said, "It was a RBI decision to liquidate the banks and our department has only implemented the order. The state government never had any interest in the liquidation of these banks."

Following a RBI order around 20 days back, the Visnagar Nagrik Bank was liquidated first followed by the Anand-based Charotar Nagrik Bank and four other banks.

The four banks are Santram with a depositor base of over 20,000 and Janta Nagrik with 4,500 depositors along with General Co-operative Bank.

At present the state government-appointed liquidators are looking after the day-to-day operations of the banks till Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation settles the claims and takes over the banks' debt list to recover the money lying with defaulters.

Though Chudasma claimed about speedy filing of claims with the corporation of the state government, the president of the All Gujarat Co-Operative Bank Depositors' Association, Prakashbhai Gujjar, said, "We do not have any hope of getting back the deposits even in next six months, forget about the claims of getting it in next three months. We have experience of such liquidation of co-operative banks and there are various instances that even it had taken 10 years to settle the claims of the depositors."

Only last week, the association had met the Union finance minister, Jashwant Singh, in New Delhi and demanded the speedy disbursement of claims of the depositors having less than Rs 1 lakh deposits with the already liquidated co-operative banks.

Meanwhile, the depositors who are having deposits over Rs one lakh with these banks will face the worst as the DICGC will settle the claims of those depositors only who are having deposits of the upper limit of Rs one lakh.

"The number of such depositors is not very large in comparison to the smaller depositors. There are only 1,223 depositors who had over Rs 1 lakh with the Charotar Nagrik which had a total depositor base of over 2.74 lakhs," said the minister.

"We do not think that DICGC will delay the process of settling claims over its stipulated 60-90 days period and we have already requested the top RBI officials to look into the matter. Take the case of Shree Laxmi Co-Operative Bank which had around 32,0000 depositors and the bank had gone bust but the corporation had settled the claims within five months of the liquidation of the bank and we have more such reasons to be confident of saying that the depositors of these six banks will also get their claims settled early," Chudasma said.

The corporation, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, will now need to cough up at least Rs 580 crore as insurance claims of these co-operative banks in which the lion's share will be of Visnagar Nagrik and Charotar Nagrik Bank.