It refers to justified comments of former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi that banking-fraud like in Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank could be prevented if Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would not have resisted his (CIC) orders despite Supreme Court having upheld these orders. Ultimately Apex Court on a contempt petition against RBI Governor had to give stringent-most warning to RBI for obeying Supreme Court pro-transparency order. CIC-order was –Merely because disclosure of such information may adversely affect public confidence in defaulting institutions, cannot be a reason for denial of information under the RTI Act. If there are certain irregularities in the working and functioning of such banks and institutions, the citizens certainly have a right to know about the same. The best check on arbitrariness, mistakes and corruption is transparency, which allows thousands of citizens to act as monitors of public interest.
RBI in larger public-interest with a far-sighted approach, discourage banks in private, multi-national and co-operative sector banks to safeguard money of depositors, and must not give any more licence to new banks. Rather a move should be initiated for a gradual merger of all non public-sector banks in public-sector banks. To prevent any probability of failure of some multi-national bank, a premium public-sector bank should be established to merge foreign banks where premium banking-services may be available on lines of advanced countries by having more than normal banking-charges.
SUBHASH CHANDRA AGRAWAL