Implications
IANS observed that all district cooperative banks were banned from accepting deposits of demonetized notes after November 14, 2016 – five days after the note ban – “on fears that black money would be laundered through this route”.
Therefore, the receipt of a massive amount of Rs 745 crore in one district cooperative bank within five days of the note ban would seem unusual. There is no illegality implied in the RTI reply, but the amounts involved raise questions about why the numbers at the bank were so much higher than in others.
The RTI queries also revealed that only seven public sector banks (PSBs), 32 SCBs, 370 DCCBs, and a little over three-dozen post offices across India collected Rs 7.91 lakh crore. This amount is more than half (52 percent) of the total amount of old currencies of Rs 15.28 lakh crore deposited with the RBI.
Roy said it was a serious matter if only a few banks and their branches and a handful post offices accounted for over half the old currency notes.
What is the clarification?
NABARD has clarified that the deposits at the bank were in line with its size, and all KYC norms were adhered to. It saw nothing unusual in the scrapped notes deposited or exchanged between November 10 and 14 in 2016.
It pointed out that the Ahmedabad bank was a very successful one, and that high deposit volumes at the institution were not unusual.
It said that 98.66% of accounts in the Ahmedabad bank received deposits of less than Rs 2.5 lakh each. Of all the accounts in the bank, not just the ones that saw deposits, NABARD said that just 0.09% received deposits of more than Rs 2.5 lakh each. It also claimed that the average deposit amount at the Ahmedabad Branch was Rs 46,795, lower than the average across DCCBs of Gujarat. It also sought to add context about the branch itself, saying it has total business levels of more than Rs 9,000 crore and is one of India’s top DCCBs.
Taking down Rahul Gandhi is boring, because he neither has facts nor credibility. 746cr was deposited by 1.6L account holders [mostly farmers and neo-middle class], which translates to ~ 46K/depositor, lower than other banks. RG's demonetisation blues? #DesperateLiesOfCongress https://t.co/IBEJYves37
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) June 22, 2018
These numbers do add context to the statistics revealed in the RTI reply, but they do not serve as anything of a clean chit or a denial.
Conclusion
The Opposition is hell-bent on claiming that Amit Shah “made a whopping Rs 745 crores” without any evidence to that effect. The party has also sought to connect the episode to the Jay Shah allegations, by which a company owned by the BJP president’s son was alleged to have seen a massive spike in revenues the year after Modi came to power.
Both the RTI and the clarification provide information, but they are still unable to provide a complete image of what exactly was happening in district cooperative banks before the RBI decided to stop them from accepting deposits of old notes.
ALSO READ: Paytm Was Asked For Users’ Data By PMO, Alleges Sting Operation By Cobrapost
