There is now a demand to widen the scope of investigation regarding the Ayodhya Ram temple offering theft case. Ramnath Shukla, President of All India Indian Bank Officers Association (UP and Uttarakhand) and Senior Manager of Indian Bank Lucknow, has advocated the involvement of CBI and ED for an impartial investigation of the case. He said that if the bank had followed the SOP, perhaps this situation would not have happened. When SOP is prepared by a bank or any company, it is not written in it that we will provide private employees. All that remains is that the employees will give.
Ramnath Shukla, senior manager of Indian Bank Lucknow, said that the bank should give government employees because it was a temple issue. As per the information coming in, the outsourced company and the bank employed them for counting, their work was for housekeeping and cleaning but they were employed for counting, which is a big negligence. Banks like State Bank have done wrong things.
Ramnath Shukla said, if all the rules and procedures had been followed completely, such a big incident would not have happened. The prescribed arrangements were violated and some greedy elements took advantage of it. When the process of illegal profits started, many other people also started getting involved in it. If the role of any person associated with the trust comes to light in the investigation, then he should also be investigated impartially.
Intensive investigation is not possible only at the SIT level.
He said that a thorough investigation of the transactions and financial aspects of such a huge amount of money is not possible only at the SIT level. In such cases, the role of financial investigation agencies, especially ED, can be important. To ensure fairness in the entire episode, investigation should be conducted by both CBI and ED.
Raising questions on the banking system, Shukla said that the people who were responsible for money management are not said to be regular bank employees but employees associated with the housekeeping agency. He says that under normal circumstances such sensitive responsibility is given to the permanent employees of the bank, because they are within the ambit of banking rules, accountability and service conduct.
Responsibility needs to be fixed at many levels
He said that getting this type of work done by employees of an external agency raises serious questions. Based on prima facie available information, some names are in discussion but their role should be confirmed by the investigating agencies only. He claimed that based on the facts revealed so far, there is a need to fix responsibility at many levels.
Also raising questions on the role of State Bank, Shukla said, if there has been procedural negligence on the part of the bank, then the concerned bank and its officials will have to answer for it. He said that a high level of transparency and accountability was expected in the operation of the accounts of such a large religious trust. He suggested that in future the Trust can ensure better competition and transparency by giving service opportunities to different banks also.
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