District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) in Gujarat are all set to deposit old currency notes worth Rs2,200 crore after the Centre on Wednesday directed all the banks to deposit demonetised currency notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000 with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 30 days.
The notes were all collected from depositors between November 10 and 14, when the RBI said DCCBs were not supposed to exchange old currency notes or accept deposits in old currency notes. With this directive, the seven-month ordeal of DCCBs will soon come to an end.
In a gazette notification dated June 20, the central government said if any bank or post office has collected deposits in old currency notes, which ceased to be legal tenders for financial transactions till December 30, 2016, or during November 10 to 14 in case of DCCBs, they have to deposit these currency notes at any of the offices of the RBI within 30 days, or July 20.
A total of 18 DCCBs in Gujarat had collected Rs2,200 crore in the first five days of demonetisation in November last year and have since been storing them, uncertain about the fate of the corpus lying idle. They had to take on lease additional godowns to store the notes and had been paying the rent and the insurance cost.
Dileep Sanghani, chairman of National Federation of State Cooperative Banks and chairman of Amreli DCCB, says, “We are relieved the government has finally allowed us to deposit these notes.”
Dileep Sanghani, chairman of National Federation of State Cooperative Banks (NAFSCOB), wants that DCCBs be compensated for the cost they had incurred to preserve the notes.
“We stored these notes on behalf of the RBI. So we should be compensated through the RBI, NABARD or the government,” notes Sanghani. “The uncertainty over the deposits had hindered the operations of DCCBs. We were restricted in doing business,” says CN Tarpara, chairman of Rajkot DCCB, which collected deposits worth Rs550 crore. Sources in the know say intense pressure from DCCBs in Maharashtra and upcoming Assembly elections have forced the government to take some action, or else it could have faced the consequences.
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