Allow cooperative banks to accept old notes: Gowda urges PM

Bengaluru, Nov 21: Former Prime Minister and JD(S) president H D Deve Gowda appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday to allow district central cooperative (DCC) banks to accept demonetized notes in the interest of the farming community.

In a letter to the PM, Gowda stated that the Reserve Bank of India's circular dated November 17 should be modified as it bars DCC banks from accepting and exchanging Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes.

In Karnataka, there are 21 DCC banks with 708 branches. These banks have 45.91 lakh deposit accounts and 21.73 lakh loan accounts along with advances to the tune of Rs 20,256.44 crore. In his letter Gowda stated: "The farmers who have availed crop loans from the cooperatives cannot repay the loans to the DCC banks because of non-availability of currencies. If they fail to repay within the due dates they will not be able to get interest subsidies from the government."

Gowda also warned about a delay in payments to the dairy farmers and stated: "This has also affected the remittance of milk sales amount from the milk cooperative societies to DCC banks and payment of milk bills from DCC banks to cooperative societies. This will affect the daily payments to be made to dairy farmers."