The Supreme Court rejected a plea seeking directions of certain aspects, including insuring around 15 lakh customers whose money is blocked in the Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, on Friday. A Chief Justice, Ranjan Gogoi, headed bench asked the petitioner to approach High Court for seeking relief on his plea.
It is to be noted that last month, under the provision of the Banking Regulation Act, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had imposed regulatory restrictions on the PMC Bank.
The controversy aroused when the RBI allowed depositors to withdraw a paltry Rs 1,000 from the bank. Later the limit was increased to Rs 25,000 which is now raised to Rs 40,000. But now, the customers are asking for the full access to all their accounts.
Read: RBI increase PMC bank withdrawal limits to 40,000
Till now, there has been three deaths due to the bank crisis.
Appearing for Centre, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the government are taking care of concern of PMC bank account holders and taking effective steps to attach the properties of wrong doers.
He further said that 88 immovable properties have been attached.
A petition was filed in the court by Delhi-based Bejon Kumar Misra, who said that the RBI’s move has caused disastrous consequences for the depositors. He also alleged that the centre and the RBI had not taken any emergency steps towards the protection of the hard earned money of around 15 lakh customers.
In the plea to the court, it was requested to issue an exhaustive and comprehensive guideline to safeguard the banking and co-operative deposits in the eventuality of emergency financial crisis where comon people are financially stranded by the acts of few unscrupulous persons which eventually leading to various personal irreversible catastrophes.
Misra also sought quashing of the RBI notification restricting the limit of withdrawal of deposited amount in the bank.