During the past five financial years, public sector banks (PSBs) have made an aggregate recovery of Rs4,80,111 crore from the non-performing asset (NPA) accounts and upgradation of NPAs of Rs1,45,356 crore. However, most PSBs refuse to share the names of big defaulters whose loans were settled through the national company law tribunal (NCLT), where these lenders have to accept a haircut on the outstanding.
Only 73 properties were identified for illegally running commercial businesses in housing societies. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) estimates that areas within its jurisdiction, including merged villages, have around 50,000 such properties.
IDBI Bank Ltd, which has received multiple bailouts in the past few years, recovered just 7% from big defaulters who have an outstanding of Rs100 crore and more, from Rs45,536 crore bad loans it wrote off since financial year (FY)2016-17. What is more shocking is IDBI Bank took a haircut of 60% while settling loans worth Rs15,623 crore through the national company law tribunal (NCLT), reveals a reply received under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. IDBI Bank was re-categorised as a private sector lender in January 2019 after the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) increased its stake to 51% in the lender.
Maintaining the tradition of public sector banks (PSBs) of keeping hidden the names of big and wilful defaulters, the Central Bank of India (CBI) says information about defaulter-borrowers whose loans worth Rs100 crore and above are written off, is related to third-party and hence cannot be provided. Since FY2016-17, the Bank wrote off bad debts worth Rs21,085 crore of these big defaulters while recovering just 10% or Rs2,031 crore. Interestingly, speaking about haircuts it suffered while recovering bad loans of big defaulters, CBI simply says the query is unclear and hence cannot be replied to!