NEW DELHI: A day after a controversy erupted over finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman pulling up SBI executives led by chairman Rajneesh Kumar in Guwahati, finance ministry officials on Sunday defended the minister’s impatience, describing it as “ justified and legitimate concern” over the functioning of state and local level bankers.
“She was lamenting the insensitivity of local bank officials and pulled up the officers of the state-level bankers’ committee (SLBC). In fact, their insensitive action had deprived almost 8 lakh tea garden workers of accessing their Jan-Dhan bank account dues for more than a year. The poor tea garden workers were unable to get their own DBT benefits withdrawn. They were suffering for no fault of theirs and the local bank officials, despite various attempts by the local and state administration, were not paying any heed to resolve this issue,” a senior officer present at the meeting in Guwahati last month said.
At the meeting, the issue was f
