Five bank unions to protest Nayak panel report

Chennai, May 22 (IANS) Five bank unions are gearing up to hold protest meetings across the country to voice their opposition against the Nayak Committee report's recommendations Friday, an official said.

"This is perhaps the last protest meeting against the outgoing United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's policies," All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) general secretary C.H. Venkatachalam told IANS.

He said, "Bank employees will also be asked to give their views on the committee's report in their individual capacity to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI has sought public views on the committee's report."

Besides AIBEA, the protesting unions are All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA), Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), Indian National Bank Employees Federation (INBEF) and Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC).

The RBI constituted an expert committee under the chairmanship of P.J. Nayak, former chairman of Axis Bank, to review governance of boards of banks in India.

The committee submitted its report recently and the RBI asked for comments from the public on it by June 12, 2014.

The unions are angry as the committee recommended reduction of government holding in public sector banks to less than 50 percent, merging government banks, keeping out government banks from the ambit of Central Vigilance Commission and the Right to Information Act, transferring government's holdings to an investment company and repealing the Bank Nationalisation Act.

Venkatachalam said the main challenge before the banks is the increasing bad loans (more than Rs.5 trillion today) and the government is not doing anything towards that.

"Bulk of these bad loans are amounts due from private corporate houses, business enterprises and industrial houses. It is not wise to hand over the banks to the very same private sector responsible for the huge bad loans in the banks," he said.

Queried about the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, he said, "We have seen its actions. The earlier NDA government had proposed to amend the Bank Nationalisation Act to bring down its stake in banks to 33 percent."

Looking back at the UPA rule and the protests held by the unions, Venkatachalam said: "We were able to thwart the speed of reforms planned by the outgoing government by our opposition. They could not do what they wanted to do."

He said around 200,000 bank employees will retire in two-three years' time and over a five-year period the total retirement will be around 400,000.

"That is a big challenge. The banks have to hire to fill in the vacancies. Already the branch network is on the growth path," Venkatachalam said.

According to him, during the past five years around 400,000 bank employees retired and the new hiring were only around 300,000.