26 June 2001

MADHAVPURA BANK'S REVIVAL DOES NOT SAVE IT FROM JPC SCRUTINY

From Our Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI: Despite the best efforts, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party has failed to stop the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) from probing the functioning of the  Ahmedabad-based Madhavpura Mercantile Bank that sunk after exposure of its dubious funding of broker Ketan Parikh in the stock scam.

The JPC has summoned the chairman and management of the bank as also the concerned officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to appear before it on July 11 to explain their alleged role in the scam that has shaken the capital market.

The BJP members are understood to have pleaded that the bank was being revived with the government's guarantee while the JPC probe into its operations at this crucial stage would hamper efforts to refund money to the depositors hit by the bank's closure.

They even pleaded that the revival was based on a thorough probe by the RBI and as such there was no need of yet another probe by the JPC. The Congress and some other Opposition members, however, are reported to have insisted on putting the Madhavpura Bank on the mat on the ground that it had played a key role in the brokers disturbing the capital market and the inquiry into the scam would be incomplete unless all aspects are thoroughly examined.

A Congress member pointed out that his leader late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was continuously attacked during his life time and even after his death for the so-called Bofors pay-off scam of Rs 60 crores while those involved in the Madhavpura Bank scam have swindled ten times or even more and yet they are sought to be saved from the people's wrath by the BJP governments at the Centre and in Gujarat by extending guarantees.

The Chairman and other members on the Board of Directors of the bank are "swindlers" who cannot be allowed to go scot-free just by appointing a new set of Board of Directors to manage the revived bank, the Congress member said while wondering whether the haste with which Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani and Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel got the bank's revival package cleared last week has anything to do with the ongoing JPC probe.

It may be mentioned here that the JPC set up during the second half of the budget session of Parliament to probe the stock exchange scam has been holding sittings so far to familiarize itself with various aspects while its actual hearing begins only from its next five-day sitting from July 9 and then in the evenings during the Parliament session that begins from July 23. Prakash Mani Tripathi, a BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, heads the JPC, the second constituted to probe the stock scam in a decade. The earlier JPC was set up following the stock upheavals created by the frauds of the Bull, Harshad Mehta.

While the Madhavpura Bank and RBI officials would be examined on July 11, the Unit Trust of India would be on the mat for the next two days on July 12 and 13. END