PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 893
set any upper limit. It just says Rs. 25 crores. That is to say, all other banks who have—may be—Rs. 100 crores as working capital or Rs. 200 crores as working capital, are to be on a par with a bank who has got just Rs. 25 crores as its working capital. As a flagrant illustration of this wrong classifiaction, I find that the case of the Imperial Bank is the most apposite. My friend there has given figures, but I would like to give the figures that I have for what they are worth. Its capital, I understand is somewhere about Rs. 218 crores, and it has deposits totalling 41 per cent, of the total deposits of all the Indian scheduled banks. Now, Sir, I should like to ask whether it is right to place a bank with Rs. 25 crores as working capital on the same footing, on the same par with a bank which has got Rs. 218 crores as working capital and whether it was not desirable and necessary for the government to create a special class of the Imperial Bank.
Prof. G. Ranga (Andhara) : Let them nationalise it.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: I have not got all the figures but there are many groups between Rs. 25 crores and Rs. 218 crores, and I am sure that, if there had been many classifications, many employees would have got larger benefits by way of wages and other emoluments, because they will all be related to profits, but the Finance Minister has very quietly accepted the classification proposed by these three bodies without proper investigation.
Mr. Chairman : You must wind up. Dr. Ambedkar. There are other speakers.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Yes, Sir, I would not take more than a minute or two. I do not know why my hon. friend, who made an exemption in the case of the United Bank, which was really an exemption which worked adversely to the working classes, did not make a different category of the Imperial Bank, so that it would have been a discrimination in favour of the working classes. Surely, one would have been on a par with the other.
Then, there is another thing arising out of this point of classification. None of these three bodies, the Sen Committee,