Amruta Fadnavis, the wife of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, is an accomplished woman in her own right. She is the Vice President of Axis Bank and she assumed that position on 31st October, 2014. An allegation that has been made time and again, without any evidence, is that the Maharashtra Police’s salary accounts were transferred to the Axis Bank during her tenure as VP.
The same baseless allegation was repeated by Gaurav Pandhi, a ‘political activist’ close to the Congress party. He shared a news report by the Mumbai Mirror to peddle the narrative, which said that the Maharashtra government was only now considering a move to the State Bank of India for the same.
Fadnavis’s wife is VP at Axis Bank and therefore Police department’s salary accounts were moved to her bank bringing business of billions of dollars BUT was a loss for SBI. Wow!
Maharashtra Govt is now considering to move the accounts back to SBI. https://t.co/1ZTgZNrzJz
— Gaurav Pandhi (@GauravPandhi) December 26, 2019
The same lie was spread by compulsive hatemonger Nikhil Wagle, who is known to harbour a deep seated casteist hatred against Brahmins.
Axis Bank set to lose one of its biggest clients: Over 2 lakh police salary accounts worth more than Rs 11,000 cr to go back to a nationalised bank | Mumbai Mirror https://t.co/3nsbfBtQAP
— nikhil wagle (@waglenikhil) December 25, 2019
People associated with the Congress party want the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI to investigate the matter.
Public sector Banks have been the back-bone of India! In departure to the normal practice @Dev_Fadnavis blatantly moved government treasury to Axis Bank where his wife is the VP!
Wondering when will ED & CBI investigate the kickbacks in this deal!?https://t.co/wdtxjUZRYj
— Aman Panwar (@amanpanwar) December 26, 2019
The allegations, obviously, could not be further from the truth. The Axis Bank has been managing the salary accounts for the Mumbai Police since March 2005, at least six months before Devendra Fadnavis even married Amruta Fadnavis and over nine years before the BJP leader’s wife became Vice President at the bank. Therefore, to claim that it was the Fadnavis Government in Maharashtra that transferred the salary accounts to the Axis Bank because Amruta Fadnavis is the VP of it is a clear and malicious lie and a political attack that has no basis in truth.
The PTI report mentioned above says while quoting a senior official of Mumbai Police, “The bank also has the salary accounts of employees of Kendriya Vidyalaya, the Urban Development Department of the state government and the Charity Commissioner’s office for long, he said. The state government decided to disburse the salaries through nationalised and private banks in 2005, and UTI Bank was among the 16 banks selected for this purpose, he said. In 2007, UTI Bank changed its name to Axis Bank.”
Read: Amruta Fadnavis vs Shiv Sena: Wife of Former Maharashtra CM slams the party for crass demonstration
It is entirely up to the Maharashtra Government to decide whether they wish to continue employing the services of Axis Bank or not but for political hacks to make dubious allegations against those perceived as political opponents is disingenuous. Quite clearly, it is a flight of fantasy to claim that Axis Bank ended up handling the salary accounts of Mumbai Police due to Amruta Fadnavis’ relationship with the former Maharashtra CM. The Axis Bank has been handling it since even before the two were even married.
