An all-party meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday to discuss the crisis in the cooperative sector emanating from the lack of permission for cooperative banks to carry out transactions in and exchange the demonetised currency notes decided to send a delegation to Delhi to convince the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister about the magnitude of the crisis.
Stating that Kerala could not make any compromise on the issue, Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who chaired the meeting said, “The Cooperative sector does not want a confrontation. The sector had been enjoying certain benefits and these benefits should be restored.” He said the State Assembly would discuss the issue in detail on Tuesday.
Unanimity prevailed in the meeting from its very start on the point that the cooperative sector, whose operations had come to a standstill since the currency demonetisation, was going through a deep crisis but the BJP walked out of it after the other participants opposed its proposal that the banks in the cooperative sector should be prepared to abide by RBI guidelines.
“RBI guidelines should be followed to ensure transparency. That is what the BJP is asking for. But the CPI(M)-led lDF and (Congress-led) UDF are not accepting this. Both of them are black money coalitions,” said State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan. He said a BJP team would be sent to convince the Centre about the actual situation in Kerala’s cooperative sector.
The State BJP argues that a major part of the deposits in the State’s primary cooperative banks and cooperative societies is black money and several of the account holders in cooperative banks are binamis of the rich and politicians. But the CPI(M) is countering this by asking the BJP to disclose the nature of accounts and deposits in the cooperatives it controls in Kasaragod district.