The Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB) had deposited old ₹500 and ₹1000 currency notes worth ₹745.59 crore in merely five days after the November 9, 2016 demonetisation announcement was made, an RTI reply revealed. Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) president Amit Shah is a director with the bank, according to the official website.
Interestingly, on November 14, 2016, i.e. five days after the announcement, the government issued a fresh notification prohibiting district corporative banks from accepting old currency notes, underlining that many would use them for laundering demonetised notes.
News organisations take down report
This story was first reported by News18 and the report was taken down by the news organisation within a few hours. Similarly, The New Indian Express and Firstpost also took down the report from their news portals suspiciously.
Rajkot District Cooperative Bank
The ADCB collected the highest amount of banned notes in just five days, among all other district cooperative banks in the country.
The Rajkot District Cooperative Bank, whose chairman is a BJP minister, recorded deposits worth ₹693.19 crore. Jayeshbhai Vitthalbhai Radadiyaas, a cabinet minister in Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani’s cabinet is the chairman of this bank.
The Public Sector Banks
“The amount of deposits made in the State Cooperative Banks (SCBs) and District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs)—revealed under RTI for the first time since demonetisation—are astounding,” Manoranjan S. Roy, the Mumbai/based RTI activist who made the effort to get the information, told IANS.
Furthermore, over 52 per cent of the demonetised currency deposits came from only seven Public Sector Banks (PSBs), 32 SCBs and 360 DCCBs.
“At this rate, serious questions arise about the actual collection of spiked notes through the remaining 14 mega-PSBs, besides rural-urban banks, private banks (like ICICI, HDFC and others), local cooperatives, Jankalyan Banks and credit cooperatives and other entities with banking licenses, the figures of which are not made available under RTI,” Roy said.