Lord Jagannath’s Rs 545 crore now stuck in Yes Bank

Bhubaneshwar : The Jagannath Temple in Puri has Rs 545 crore of its funds in the capital-starved Yes BankNSE -56.11 % which has been placed under a 30-day moratorium, including a cap of Rs 50,000 on withdrawals, by the Reserve Bank of India.

The temple administration has two fixed deposits in the private bank that were to mature on March 16 and March 29, Odisha law minister Pratap Jena said on Friday. After maturity, the money would be withdrawn and deposited in a state-run bank, he told reporters.

According to media reports, Yes Bank had committed to returning these funds in three tranches on March 19, March 23 and March 29.

But the central bank’s decision to supersede the bank’s board and appoint Prashant Kumar, a former deputy managing director at SBI, as its administrator puts a question mark on the previous management’s commitments.

The Naveen Patnaik-led government had announced plans to move these funds to public sector bank earlier this year.

Last month, Jena had told the state assembly that Rs 592 crore out of the Jagannath Temple’s Rs 626.44 crore savings, had been kept with Yes Bank. Later the temple administration withdrew Rs 47 crore that was in a flexi account.

The government’s decision to park these funds in a private bank had come to light after a bureaucrat in the state’s agriculture department was accused of graft in his decision to shift about Rs 80 crore from a public sector bank to a private bank.

Questions had then been raised about the Sri Jagannath Temple Administration’s decision to park so much of the temple’s funds in a private bank instead of a nationalised bank.

The country’s richest temple Tirumala Tirupati had withdrawn Rs 1,300 crore held at Yes Bank in October last year, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which manages the affairs of the temple, said on Friday.

Source : Economic Times