Responding to Sedam MLA Rajkumar Patil Telkur who demanded the immediate superseding of the board of Kalaburagi District Cooperative Central (DCC) Bank on the grounds of rampant irregularities and misappropriation of funds, Deputy Chief Minister and Kalaburagi in charge Govind Karjol directed the Deputy Commissioner to conduct a preliminary probe and send a report to the government.
As the Department of Cooperatives was taken up for review at the Karnataka Development Programme meeting here on Thursday, Mr. Telkur raised the issue and alleged that the bank was mired in corruption and misuse of public funds for long.
“The same people have been the directors of the bank. They lend crop loans only to their kin on false documents and deny loan facilities to genuine farmers. When the State government announces loan-waiver scheme, they get the benefits and genuine farmers are denied are deprived. The directors have also gone out of the way to lend loans to their relatives and friends for non-agriculture activities prompting the Apex bank to forfeit the bank’s deposit. Corruption and misappropriation of funds have gone to such an extent that the bank is now in an irreparable condition. The government should supersede it and then order for an enquiry,” he alleged.
Chittapur MLA Priyank Kharge questioned how the government could supersede the bank’s elected body without having substantial evidence such as an enquiry report.
Mr. Karjol also did not agree for direct action without a substantial probe report at hand. He then ordered the district administration to conduct an enquiry so that he could pursue the issue for suitable action at government level based the enquiry report.
When Afzalpur MLA M.Y. Patil said that superseding was not a solution, Mr. Telkur affirmatively told him it would be a reality shortly and advised him to come out of the administrative boy immediately, if his hands were clean.
“If you, being the part of the bank’s administrative body, have not done anything wrong, you better step down immediately before the probe commences,” Mr. Telkur told Mr. Patil.
Mr. Priyank took serious exceptions to the incomplete information that the officials provided and their unpreparedness for the meeting.
“It is the first KDP meeting that I am seeing officers from all the departments providing incomplete and misleading information. They have given only the information pertaining to 2019-20. They have deliberately hidden the information on the works taken up in previous years and have spilled over to the current year,” he said.
Mr. Karjol also expressed his discontentment over the “unpreparedness” of officers in the meeting.
“You are high-ranking offices and have come here unprepared. You should have had meetings with your subordinates and got equipped with complete information before coming to the meeting. You simply came here with whatever your subordinate clerks prepared,” he said.
He also directed them to prepare a booklet of detailed information from each department and provide it to legislators at least two days before the meeting.
