48 villages in Himachal to have banks by March

All villages with a population of 2,000 and above in Himachal Pradesh will have banks by March next year , a top Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) official said here.

“We have identified 48 villages without banks , each will have a bank branch by early next year,” said R Gurumurthy general manager RBI Shimla office .

“In the second phase, 500 villages having 1,000 population will be covered ,” he said.

“Even though the penetration of banks was much better than the national average which was 14,000 people per branch and 4,500 people per branch in Himachal, credit raising was a concern in the hill state ,” Gurumurthy said .

He said there was an RBI plan to spread bio-metric banking in Himachal through business correspondents (BC) by March 2012 .

“This high tech scheme will have the facility of mobile banking, besides BCs will go to the doorstep of customers to collect money among other banking activities,” he explained .

Gurumurthy said the RBI was receiving many complaints from individuals, trusts and other entities regarding fraudulent communication by phone, email and snail mail.

These offers relate to fictitous offers, lottery offers , lottery prizes, remittance of cheap funds in foreign currency, overseas jobs and scholarships .

Such cases were on the rise across India and Himachal Pradesh . A lawyer from Rampur Bushahr had recently fallen into a trap of winning a lottery of Rs 7.8 crore and was asked to deposit Rs 38,000 online which he did and in the process lost his money .

The RBI has appealed to the public to be wary of such fraudulent offers and report such cases to the RBI and the police .