The government has begun implementing the recommendations made by the Y S P Thorat committee for the restructuring of regional rural banks (RRBs). The order issued by the Union ministry of finance on 22 August last says that the question of revisiting the model RRBs and employees services regulations 2000 in the changed scenario, especially after the restructuring of RRBs by way of amalgamation, has been engaging the attention of government for quite some time.
The government has constituted another committee under the chairmanship of Amaresh Kumar, executive director, Nabard. Apart from conducting study, review and suggesting suitable amendments to the regulation, the committee will be examining the issue of having separate service regulations for officers and employees of RRBs. Moreover, the government has directed the RRBs to go for lateral recruitment directly up to a maximum of 25% in scale II and 10% in scale III for cadres like information technology, agriculture, treasury, law, marketing and chartered accountants.
However, All India RRB Officers’ Federation has objected the way the modifications being made by the government for the RRBs. The incumbency levels were higher than some of the state-run banks.
Under the new categorisation norms, transactions up to Rs 6 crore can be handled by the scale I officers against the previous limit of Rs 1.5 crore, whereas in the case of SCBs like Central Bank of India, the limit was Rs 4 crore, feels the federation.
Talking to FE, SK Bhattacharjee, general secretary of the federation, said that the government has accepted that RRBs are social bankers and hence they are separate from scheduled commercial banks (SCBs). On the other hand, they are meant for creating volumes of business for RRBs in different categories above SCBs, said Bhattacharjee.