State Bank of India (SBI), the country s largest State-run lender, is at it again. In its latest replies under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, SBI refused to provide information on legal expenses and fees paid to senior counsel Harish Salve in the electoral bonds (EBs) case.
While public sector banks (PSBs) continue to refuse to share names of big defaulters citing confidentiality of customer data , information shared by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), reveals that just 312 big defaulters owe more than 76% or Rs1,41,583.50 crore of the total bad loans.
On 10thApril,
The Times of India published a report to say that major banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and HDFC Bank, had moved the Supreme Court (SC) of India to recall its six-year old judgement of 2015, which had ordered banks to provide certain information about their functioning under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Banks and their expensive lawyers argued that “account holders may sue them for putting such details (client information) in the public domain” and that the order could be “misused for corporate rivalry” and affect the banking industry as a whole. Let’s examine how correct this claim is.