Taking the string of Patthalgadi one step ahead and adding a new dimension to it, a group of villagers coming from more than 90 villages of Khunti district assembled at Udburu on Sunday and laid the foundation stone for their ‘own bank’ named as ‘Gram Sabha Bank’.
Announcement for this was made well before though the police administration reportedly remained a distant onlooker while the villagers in the leadership of Yusuf Putry marched to Udburu. large number of women and youths joined the procession.
“Since this was planned earlier, youths of the group were deployed in around 5-6 kilometer periphery from the site where the first bank was to setup so that any movement of police and administration could be detected. The villagers opened their accounts in the Gram Sabha Bank and were given passbooks also,” said a rural elected representative.
He said that the purpose of the bank is to run a parallel financial system for the villagers in the lines of the banking system in place which would deal with public money, give loans and accept deposits. The villagers were carrying dummy of sophisticated weapons like AK-47.
Confirming to the development, Khunti SP Ashwini Kumar Sinha told The Pioneer that the police were in wait and watch mode. “We have inputs about the activity taking place at village Udburu of Murhu block of the district. The information is not official though. The police would act in time,” said the SP.
Several villages of the district and several others in Simdega, Gumla and West Singhbhum have seen spurt in ‘pathalgarhi’ like activities where the organisers wrongly tweaking the Constitutional provisions have restricted entries of ‘outsiders’ without permission of the local Gram Sabha. Also schools, healthcare facilities and anganwadi centers of the affected areas have seen imprints of it and signs of Government being erased.
Some arrests have also been made in this regard but leaders like Yusuf Purty and others have indulged into provoking villagers and for setting up series of parallel system defying the establishment.