A meeting of District Cooperative Bank presidents and top officials here on Saturday is understood to have decided to move the Supreme Court against the restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on cooperative institutions in participating in the exchange of demonetised high value currency notes.
The meeting, chaired by Cooperation Minister A.C. Moideen and attended by Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac, also resolved to look at different ways to lessen the difficulties being experienced by tens of thousands of persons holding accounts or deposits with cooperative banks and credit societies.
The meeting concluded that the current crisis would hurt the large majority of account holders and Central government-sponsored projects such as Jan Dhan Yojana and interest subvention schemes, targeted particularly at the farming community.
They entrusted with the DCBs the task of finding legal remedy to the plight of the cooperative sector and discussed the instruments and processes that would mitigate the difficulties of depositors and account holders.
One key proposal discussed at the meeting was to go in for a system whereby the depositors of each district cooperative bank would be able to make unavoidable purchases, such as those for weddings, from designated commercial establishments on the strength of guarantees given by the DCB concerned.
The meeting also decided that since primary cooperative credit societies would be able to source and release funds from the DCBs, they should not transfer funds deposited with them to mainstream banks by means of RTGS, NEFT or cheque clearing.
The primary cooperative credit societies should assess their fund requirement and keep the DCB concerned posted about it. Meetings would be convened by DCB presidents in all districts on Monday to discuss the decisions of the meeting.
A meeting of traders and industrialists would also be convened to take them on board. The Finance Minister offered full support for the proposals from his department and the government.
