New Delhi: Facing questions, the government on Wednesday insisted in the Rajya Sabha that State Bank of India (SBI) had not waived off Rs 7,000 crore loan, including that of industrialist Vijay Mallya, and asserted that such cases were being pursued.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley referred to the Mallya loan issue as a “terrible legacy” which the NDA government had inherited from UPA.
He gave the clarification after CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury alleged during a discussion on demonetisation that the government was favouring “crocodiles” while “small fishes” were dying.
In this context, he alleged that SBI had written off Rs 7,000 crore NPAs. He named Mallya as one of those whose loans had been written off.
“SBI has waived Rs 7000 crore from their non performing assets, of loans which are not being returned,” Yechury said.
He said a performing asset is where interest has been serviced and non-performing where interest is not serviced but you will still preserve it.
Intervening, Jaitley said, “Written off does not mean waiver… It does not mean that the loan ceases to be a loan. We will still chase the loan… .”
The Finance Minister told the Opposition, “there is a little bit of malapropism involved in this. Don’t go by literal meaning write-off, it does not. Write-off does not mean loan waiver. Loan still remains.”
He said the government continued to pursue the case.
To this, Yechury retored that the complex explanation ultimately means that “in effect, it is something that is not going to be realised” and questioned “whatever you do all these ‘hera-pheri’ (irregularities)… Will the government do the same thing for the farmers?”
Jaitley further clarified that the loan (to Mallya) was sanctioned when the present government was not in power, an apparent reference to the previous UPA rule.
“Again this was restructured when another government was in power. This is the only loan for which second restructure was wanted by that government. So we inherited a terrible legacy,” he said.
He reiterated that written off implied that in the accounting book, the performing assets become non-performing and that was all. “Otherwise the liability to pay and right to recover still remains,” he said.
Around Rs 1,200 crore in dues owed by Mallya’s collapsed Kingfisher Airlines has been labelled as “write off” in the books of the country’s largest lender, the SBI.
