J&K Bank to now come under RTI act, CVC guidelines

Srinagar, June 15 (IANS) The board of directors of Jammu & Kashmir Bank on Saturday decided to bring the bank under the J&K RTI Act, 2009 and the CVC guidelines with effect from Monday.

The board, which met here under the chairmanship of the bank's interim Chairman and Managing Director R.S. Chhibber, took significant decisions to improve the governance and bring transparency in the functioning of the bank, sources said.

"The board decided to implement J&K RTI Act 2009 and the CVC guidelines from June 17, 2009. The board took these important decisions after receiving directions from the state government that owns 59 per cent of the bank's shares," a source said.

The bank's board also decided to arrest any further slippage of accounts to NPA by initiating strong action against wilful defaulters.

"In order to boost the digital vision of the bank, the board directed strengthening of the technological framework that includes migration of its core banking solution to Finacle 10 and further strengthening the early warning and alert generation systems.

"The board assured all the stakeholders that the bank is fundamentally strong and in safe zone as all measures are afoot to institutionalise transparency and strengthen accountability frameworks structurally by reinforcing proper checks and balances within the system," the source said.

Sources said that the board was optimistic that the bank will achieve all the envisaged business targets in time and would do better on all performance indicators going forward.

One of the major stumbling blocks in the transparency and accountability of state's premier financial institution till now had been its exclusion from the ambit of the RTI Act and non-implementation of CVC guidelines.