PANAJI
The Reserve Bank of India has granted in-principal approval to release an installment of Rs 7.05 crore to settle claims of small depositors of the liquidated Mapusa Urban Cooperative Bank after a very long wait.
In a letter dated February 1, RBI’s Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) has granted in-principal approval to settle claims of 45,268 depositors of the bank who have a single account and whose deposit balance does not exceed Rs 10,000 as on the cut-off date of April 16, 2020.
Mapusa Urban Cooperative Bank’s licence was cancelled by the Reserve Bank of India on April 16, 2020 and the DICGC had issued instructions to the appointed liquidator to prepare a list of insured depositors.
However, since the audit verification of the claims of the bank’s depositors was taking time, the DICGC agreed to relax the norms of verification for small amounts of up to Rs 10,000.
In response the bank’s liquidator submitted a list of 45,268 depositors whose balances were less than Rs 10,000 amounting to Rs 7.21 crore out of the total claims of Rs 262.06 crore belonging to 67561 depositors.
The total amount to be released from liquid funds is to the tune of Rs 7.05 crore. DICGC had observed in its letter that there were delays in submission of claims due to non-completion of statutory audit to confirm the balances till the last week of December 2020.
“M/s Rahul Mhambre, CA appointed by the DICGC had forwarded the statement of Claims for individuals with single account having deposit balance not exceeding Rs 10,000 as on the cut off date i.e. 16th April 2020 [and] has verified a sample list as per advice comprising 7,481 claims for Rs 2.30 crore. Accordingly an in principle approval is being granted to release the total amount of Rs 7.05 crore from liquid funds,” the DICGC said in a letter to the liquidator.
Depositors of Mapusa Urban Bank who have been waiting for more than a year to withdraw their money after the RBI first imposed limits on withdrawals several years ago can finally hope for closure after the bank was shuttered by the RBI.
All depositors are scheduled to have their money repaid to them through the deposit insurance scheme. With a bulk of the depositors holding amounts less than Rs 10,000 this will bring substantial relief to those who held accounts in the bank.
When the Mapusa Urban bank was shut down it had 24 branches in Goa with head office in Mapusa and 193 staff members in all. There were 1.19 lakh shareholders and 2.48 lakh depositors. RBI had cancelled the bank’s banking license in April 2020.
