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RTI activist's protracted battle with J&K Bank likely to bear fruit
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SME Times News Bureau | 12 Jun, 2019
Raja Muzaffar Bhat, president of Jammu and Kashmir RTI movement has
fought a protracted battle with the management of the Jammu and Kashmir
Bank seeking transparency and accountability in working and asset
management by this premier financial institution of the state.
Speaking exclusively to IANS, Bhat recalled his longstanding battle over the Bank's proclaimed exclusion from the RTI Act.
"In
2009 the J&K RTI Act came into force. Soon after an Information
Commission was constituted. I approached the Information Commission
regarding the legality of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank remaining outside
the purview of the Act.
"The then Chief Information Commissioner
G.R. Sofi delivered a detailed judgment declaring Jammu and Kashmir Bank
as a public authority thereby making it obligatory that information
sought under the RTI Act must be furnished by the Bank.
"In 2010 the Bank got the RTI Commission's judgment stayed by the state high court. The stay order had still not been vacated.
"On
November 22, 2018 the State Administrative Council (SAC) headed by
Governor Satya Pal Malik decided to bring the Bank under the RTI Act
after declaring it as a public authority. State government owns 59 per
cent shares of this bank.
"I wrote an article in a daily
newspaper saying that after the SAC decision the Jammu and Kashmir Bank
has no valid legal reason for not furnishing information about its NPAs,
huge loans to business houses, management of other assets etc.
"Instead
of furnishing the required information, the Bank filed a defamation
suit of Rs 50 crore against me in a local court in February this year."
"In
my defence I told the court that I had not named any person or any
business house that had been benefited by the Bank's management," he
said.
Bhat said despite facing defamation filed against him by
the Bank, he relentlessly continued his pursuit to throw light on the
grey areas in the Bank's functioning.
"For example, I asked the
Bank that it has shown a net profit of Rs 465 crore for the fiscal
ending March 31, 2019. I raised a simple question, the Bank has sold its
2.40 per cent stake in MetLife amounting to Rs 185 crore. I sought
explanation as to how the sale proceeds from selling of its stake in
MetLife could become a part of the Bank's net profit," the RTI activist
said.
He has raised many other questions through his RTI applications which have been brushed aside by the Bank's management.
"I
raised a query as to what prompted the Bank to sell 1,800 crore of its
bad debt portfolio to assets reconstruction companies (ARCs) at a
discount of over 40 per cent while the same borrowers reflected as bad
debts by Jammu and Kashmir Bank owed money to other banks where they
were making repayments without any distress sale of such debts by those
banks," Bhat said alleging that there is a strong reason to believe that
a huge deal of over Rs 200 crore was made by selling these debts at
over 40 per cent discount to ARCs.
The RTI activist said he is
satisfied with the steps being taken to bring transparency and
accountability in the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, but wanted the probe into
mismanagement extended beyond the tenure of the sacked Chairman Pervez
Ahmed.
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