Minister assures fast action on bank cases

 The announcement follows allegations of delaying investigations into these cases.

 The minister was speaking at a seminar on 'Urban co-operative banking' in Gandhinagar this afternoon. Minister of state for co-operation Bhupendrasinh Chudasma, who also attended the seminar, said the government will soon enforce the collections for the 'credit equalisation fund' from all the profit-making urban co-operative banks (UCBs) which in spite of requests by the state government is not being implemented by the major UCBs across the state.

 The seminar was organised by the Gujarat Sahakari Sangh and the state government. Ghanshyam Amin, head of Gujarat Sahakari Sangh, in his speech alleged that though last month the state government has ordered all UCBs to file criminal complaints against defaulters having dues of over Rs 10 lakh, the already over-stressed Gujarat police officers are unable to complete investigation of the large number of complaints they received from UCBs.

 "Instead of helping the UCBs, the police department was harassing them by asking for all sorts of irrelevant details," said Amin.

 Replying to his comment, Shah assured that he will soon hold discussions with the UCB representatives and within a deadline of 10 days a workable solution will be worked out by the state government whereby criminal complaints filed by UCBs will be acted upon immediately by the police in all the police stations wherever such cases are still pending.

 Delivering his lecture, Chudasama, the minister of state for co-operation, said on the one hand the UCBs do not want any government interference in their operations till they land up in trouble.

 "But, on the contrary when these banks face any crisis, they all immediately turn to the state government and demand that they be bailed out through government funds," he said.

 Following the seminar, special awards were given to 30 UCBs which reported zero non-performing assets.

 Among them were large banks like Kalupur Bank, Surat Mercantile, Nutan Nagrik and Cooperative Bank of Rajkot as well as one of the smallest UCB, Parshwanath Coop Bank of Rajkot.