Tamil Nadu CM urges Modi to allow cooperative society to resume business

Tamil Nadu on Sunday asked the centre to allow a cooperative society with lakhs of customers in southern India to resume taking deposits and operate as a universal bank, exempting it from a home ministry ban and central bank guidelines.

REPCO Bank was established in 1969 to help rehabilitate repatriates from Sri Lanka and Burma, but suffered a setback in 2014 when the central registrar of cooperative societies amended rules on credit societies taking deposits.

REPCO has a 49.34 per cent share capital from the central government and the remaining from Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and repatriates. It has a turnover of around Rs 14,200 crore and 10 lakh customers.

The home ministry last year asked REPCO to discontinue accepting deposits from 'B' Class members—people who are not repatriates--based on a notification issued by the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies, which comes under the agriculture ministry. The notification was partly based on a judgment of the Supreme Court last year.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Sunday gave a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Madurai, saying the Supreme Court judgment was for a private multi-state cooperative society and need not be taken as a mandatory direction for all such lenders.

Repco Micro Finance last year submitted a proposal for getting a licence as Small Finance Bank, but the Reserve Bank of India told it only applications for universal banks were being considered.

Palaniswami asked Modi to instruct the finance and home ministries to facilitate the issue of RBI licence to REPCO under any of the above two categories.