Mumbai : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday said lenders can publish photographs of only those borrowers in newspapers who have been declared wilful defaulters as per the central bank’s guidelines.
While asking the banks not to indiscriminately publish photographs of defaulters and guarantors in newspapers, it directed the lending institutions to formulate a policy in this regard. The policy should clearly sets out the criteria based on which the decision to publish the photographs of a person will be taken by them so that the approach is neither discriminatory nor inconsistent. In view of the “sensitivity involved and need to prevent” the publishing of photographs of defaulting borrower/ guarantor in an indiscriminate manner, the RBI said photographs of only those borrower who have been declared as wilful defaulters could be published. “A lending institution can consider publication of the photographs of only those borrowers, including proprietors/ partners /directors / guarantors of borrower firms/ companies, who have been declared as wilful defaulters following the mechanism set out in the RBI instructions…,” it said.