Centre should allow Puri Jagannath Temple to withdraw from Yes Bank: BJD's Prasanna Acharya

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Vice President Prasanna Acharya on Monday urged Union Finance Minister to allow Puri Jagannath Temple administration to withdraw the temple's fund from the crisis-hit Yes Bank as it belongs to the common people of the country.

Acharya said he supported the move of State Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari writing to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking her intervention in the matter.

"It is a very precarious situation and our Finance Minister of Odisha has written to the Union Finance Minister to intervene in the matter to allow the Jagannath Temple Trust to withdraw the amount that is deposited in Yes Bank. The money belongs to the thousands of devotees," Acharya told ANI.

Acharya said the Yes Bank crisis will shatter the confidence of the depositors in the banking system.

"I think it is a failure on the part of the central government and Reserve Bank of India and it proves that there is no proper monitoring system," he added.

State Finance Minister Pujari had written to Sitharaman on March 8.

"Various funds related to the temple - Foundation Fund, Corpus Fund, and Temple Fund - are being managed by the Managing Committee. Out of these funds, an amount of Rs 545 crore has been deposited with Yes Bank, Puri," Pujari wrote to Sitharaman.

"In this background, I request you to kindly issue necessary instruction to RBI to allow the release of deposits relating to SJTA in Yes Bank in the interest of millions of devotees of Lord Jagannath," he added.

Earlier, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had said that a moratorium has been imposed on Yes Bank, stressing that the bank's financial capability has undergone a steady decline largely due to the inability of the bank to raise capital.

During the period of moratorium, the Yes Bank Ltd will not, without the permission in writing of the RBI, make payment to a depositor of a sum exceeding Rs 50,000 lying to his credit in any savings, current or any other deposit account.