CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on June 25

THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) condemns the unilateral decision by the  central government to take over the supervision of 1540 urban and  rural cooperative banks through an ordinance.

This decision has been taken without consulting any of the elected  state governments when the cooperative sector including banks are  supervised by the state governments. This is yet another attack on our country’s federal structure. Such over-centralisation is an assault on one of the basic features of our constitution, federalism. This totally destroys the autonomy of the cooperatives.

Currently there are 8.4 crores of account holders and Rs 4.5 lakh crores of deposits in these banks. It is clear that this BJP central government is also eyeing this huge corpus of money to be siphoned off by it like it did with the RBI reserve fund earlier.

The cooperative sector and its banks are the backbone in many parts of  the country, rural areas and particularly agriculture. With the deposits now being available to be disbursed by the central government, it is clear that the rich, with greater capacities to borrow, will benefit at the expense of the poor. This will further destroy the support for livelihood of crores of our people.

It is indeed ironic that this ordinance was passed on the 45th 
anniversary of internal emergency in the country. This constitutes a grave attack on India’s constitutional order.

The PB of the CPI(M) demands the immediate withdrawal of this ordinance.