Amid lockdown enforcement from last 73 days in India its not just migrant daily wage earners are living a stressful life and largely been affected but even the middle class is equally facing sufferings due to loss of business or job and no more money to meet the daily necessities.
Especially the survival of families who are having the bank accounts in the Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank Limited (PMC), which has been taken over by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last year in September after it unearthed a massive fraud placing a limitation on withdrawals, has become a nightmare in these pandemic.
One such aggrieved bank account holder named Gurmukh Singh an octogenarian told the Free Press Journal, "I sold out a property and whatever money I received, I had deposited in the PMC bank. Today and my 77-year-old wife, a patient of severe anaemia, and I are facing a lot of difficulties. We do not have any life insurance policy cover through which we can avail medical facilities and has to completely depend on cash payments. As all our savings are stuck in the PMC bank we have become helpless."
Singh a taxi driver doing ferries between Mumbai -Pune from last 60 years, due to lockdown restrictions lost his only means of livelihood. About Rs 20 lakh he has in his PMC bank account.
Similar kind of grief was shared by another PMC bank account holder named Manpreet Singh Arora (38) a self employed and a resident of Sion. He said, "Due to lockdown the business is completely shut. As my mother is old we had taken a medical insurance coverage for her and every two year we pay a premium of Rs 65,000 besides my own mediclaim policy for which the premium is Rs 18,000. Her policy is 12 years old but since our hard earned money is in PMC bank and in this lockdown period we had no source of income, we were not in a position to pay the insurance premium. Therefore, we urged the bank to permit us to withdraw our money, no help was provided. Finally we had to sell the gold to pay the premiums."
The bank has a provision that if any account holder has a medical emergency and is admitted in a particular hospital it will pay Rs 5 lakh (only if the account holder is having that much money money is their account) to the hospital directly, he stated. He further asserted, "I want bank to also consider other issues like I had to pay the insurance premium. People have other expenses and in this tough time everyone needs some cash. Why are we denied to withdraw our own money? Like Yes Bank, the PMC bank should also be supported by the government. Why there is so much of delay? Conducting enquiries and jailing the owners and management of Bank has nothing to do with we depositors, who are the real sufferers. We only want our money to be returned."
Currently, as per the RBI directions, the PMC Bank only allows to withdraw Rs 50,000 of the total balance held in a depositor’s account in a period six months. Supposedly if a customer has withdrawn Rs 10,000 then he can only withdraw the remaining Rs 40,000.
The RBI imposed regulatory restrictions -- including limits on how money could be withdrawn from each account -- on the PMC Bank after it came to light that the bank had violated several regulations.Among the violations was the PMC bank which had offered loan to bankrupt real estate developer HDIL to the tune of approximately Rs 6,700 crore. Following, criminal case had been filed against the HDIL group's managing directors, Rakesh Wadhawan and his son, Sarang, accused of fraudulently availing loans of more than Rs 6,700 crore and defaulting on them. They were assisted by the bank's ex-chairman, Waryam Singh, suspended managing director Joy Thomas and bank director, Surjit Singh Arora. All the accused are currently in jail. Reportedly, the Mumbai Police economic offence wing has filed a third chargesheet in the matter against the five directors Jasbir Banwait, Balbir Singh Kochar, Surjit Singh Narang, Omprakash Uppal, Brijbhushan Handa and two valuers, Vishwanath Prabhu and Shripad Jere of PMC bank in Mumbai's Esplanade Court.
