But Abhyankar has put certain conditions before taking up the herculean job of bringing the sick bank on the path to health. He has sought a free hand in choosing his team of 2-3 board members. The Rupee Bank has 6 lakh customers and 36 branches.
Dr Abhayankar confirmed the development when Indian Cooperative pointedly asked him regarding this. “Yes it is true that I have met the Cooperation Minister and discussed the issues pertaining to the Rupee Bank ”, he admitted candidly.
Talking about the liabilities of the ucb Abhyankar said I have requested to be given Rs 300 crores of interest free loan; I do not demand any donation and I promise to repay them sooner than later. But given the present state of affairs of the Bank where it has to dole out a sum of Rs 1400 crore, this demand is not unreasonable, he added.
Indian Cooperative has learnt that presently a negotiation fort the merger of the beleaguered bank with the Corporation Bank is also going on side by side. The earlier attempts by the Saraswat Bank and the Allahabad bank had caused considerable losses for hundreds of customers who had deposited their hard-earned savings into the bank.
The choice between Abhyankar or the Corporation Bank would be clear by the first week of February, a highly placed source told Indian Cooperative. Nafcub President Mukund Abhyankar has outstanding credentials as he has been associated with the fastest growing urban cooperative bank Cosmos for a very long time.
Earlier , he had also raised concern about the Rupee Bank in his meeting with the RBI governor Dr Raghuram Rajan. He had argued that no other UCB is in a position to absorb losses exceeding Rs.500 crore and therefore, not ready for the merger. “If the Rupee Co-operative Bank is de-licensed, the entire UCB sector will face terrible difficulties’ and many other small & medium UCBs may have to face depositors scrambling to get their money back”, Nafcub Prez felt.