New Delhi: Over the last five years, the UPA Government has worked overtime on its minority agenda, so banks are being opened to help specific communities.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said in his Budget speech this year: "The Government will open 524 public sector banks in Muslim-dominated areas."
A promise is a promise and these promises have certainly been kept by the UPA Government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but all these benefits are not going to the poor and needy sections among the minorities - at least not completely.
The Prime Minister's Office found this out as is set out to review the Sachar Panel recommendation in the banking sector.
The report was tabled in Parliament last year and some key ministries, including Finance, were given responsibility of implementing the programme.
One of the recommendations of the panel was to provide better credit facilities to minorities. CNN-IBN has found that the Government is concerned with a lot of these public sector bank branches being opened in affluent or in areas which are inaccessible to the poor.
For example, in Lucknow, a bank branch has been opened in the IIM campus in Hyderabad. One has come up in the posh Banjara hills in Cochin and a bank branch for poor minorities has started functioning in the Naval Base and in Gurgaon, it's again in the posh Sushant Lok area.
Sachar Committee member Abu Saleh Sharif says the banks should be in such areas where the poor minorities can go and make use of them.
"What is the point of having them in affluent areas," he asks.
As it is Muslims over the country get 9 per cent less priority sector advances from banks and if public sector banks continue to avoid opening branches in poor, minority-dominated areas, that figure is unlikely to improve in the near future.
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