Bengaluru: Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Senior Congress Leader Prithviraj Chavan on Friday sought to link the decision to keep DCC banks out of demonetisation policy to one of the Ahmedabad district cooperative banks, in which National BJP President Amit Shah is a director.
“Has the ban on cooperative banks from doing business, which has hurt the rural economy extremely badly in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat, got anything to do with the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank having Amit Shah as the director and a deposit of Rs 500 Crore. We are going to ask them,” Chavan told reporters here.
Chavan clarified that he had never said Shah had deposited Rs 500 Crore in the cooperative bank. “Shah is a director in one of the Ahmedabad cooperative banks. I did not say he deposited the money himself. This amount of money was deposited in that bank.”
He claimed that the decision to prohibit DCC banks from accepting any deposits in the form of demonetised Rs 500 or Rs 1000 notes or exchange the old notes for new ones, was taken three days after Rs 500 Crore was deposited in one of the Ahmedabad cooperative banks, in which Shah is a director.
“Interestingly, three days after Rs 500 Crore was deposited in the bank, there was a ban imposed on cooperative banks from doing business,” he said. Chavan said the Congress had demanded a white paper and also a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the deposits made in all the banks on or before November 8, and also deposits made immediately later.
He demanded that the Gujarat government release footage of the CDs of the footages of CCTV camera installed at the Ashram Road Branch of the cooperative bank. “Let the government release the CDs of footages of CCTV cameras that were present at the Ashram Road Branch. It is a headquarter branch of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank,” he said. When asked whether the Congress had sought an explanation from former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit for calling Sahara-Birla diaries fictitious-a line of argument taken by BJP, Chavan said, “Mrs Dikshit has clarified and told Congress party that everyone whose names are in the diaries should be investigated.”
Chavan said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should inform the country about the status of the investigation conducted by tax authorities. “Mrs Sheila Dikshit had said let the investigation go on. Has the prime minister stopped the investigation? Is the investigation on? Is there any interim report? He should take the country into confidence. The prime minister should say something,” he said.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi had recently alleged that Modi as Gujarat chief minister had taken money from Sahara and Birla groups and demanded an independent inquiry into it, a charge BJP has rejected.
