The cooperative movement is facing its biggest challenge yet because of the attempts by the Reserve Bank of India and the Union government to smother the sector in the name of fighting black money, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.
He was addressing a convention to protect the cooperatives in the State at the Ernakulam Town Hall on Sunday. He said the Union government was trying to do away with the cooperative banks to help the new generation private sector banks and corporate houses that will gain from large-scale shift to e-transactions.
Mr. Vijayan maintained that the operations of cooperative banks and service societies in the State were transparent. He said the cooperative banks would cooperate with the Central financial agencies and help them unearth black money if the agencies wanted to investigate.
He said that a few leaders in Kerala were trying to tarnish the image of the State and its cooperatives. In the past, whenever a problem arose in the cooperative sector, Kerala reacted unitedly. However, now a section was trying to join hands with the Union government to destroy the Kerala economy. Traditional sector, which employs the largest number of people in Kerala, depended largely on small cooperatives, he said.
The Chief Minister said it was not clear whether Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was party to the decision to demonetise high denomination currency notes in November. Mr. Jaitley, he said, had not been helpful towards cooperative banks in Kerala, he added.
Minister for Cooperation Kadakampally Surendran said cooperators and employees would campaign to clear the image of the cooperative sector, which a few people had sought to tarnish. Around two lakh cooperators and bank employees will visit around 60 lakh households in the State on December 18 to get people to open accounts in cooperative banks.
