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PM promises to revive City Co-op Bank

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Conceding to the long-standing demand of the people of Lucknow for the revival of the City Co-operative Bank, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that the government has made up its mind to resuscitate the bank.

Speaking to the media in Lucknow on Friday Vajpayee said: "A team of Reserve Bank of India officials will shortly be sent to study the modalities of the revival of City Cooperative Bank."

The bank is alleged to have duped investors to the tune of millions of rupees.

The prime minister said, "The (RBI) team will hold discussions both with the representatives of the state government as well as the investors of the bank."

Earlier in the morning, Vajpayee gave a special audience to a delegation of the bank's investors.

Unlike the big investors including affluent politicians and influential bureaucrats who had pumped in their allegedly "ill-gotten" gains in the Century Consultants, the finance company floated by the bank's promoters, small and moderate investors had deposited their life's savings in the City Co-op Bank.

It may be recalled that Century owners, Anand Krishna Johari and Arvind Mohan Johari, who were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in Kalimpong, had earlier managed to strike a deal with the UP government to jointly set up a software technology park in Lucknow .

Even the prime minister was roped in to lay the foundation stone of the park thereby giving it all the necessary credibility before the promoters did the vanishing trick and duped the investors to the order of some Rs 4.5 billion.

T N Khanna, convenor of the Investors Forum said: "If the Madhavpura Bank could be put back on rails in the political constituency of Union Home Minister L K Advani, couldn't the same be done in prime minister's?"

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