Wilful defaulters owing money to nationalised banks stood at Rs 2.05 lakh crore as of March 31, 2023. The information was provided by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under Right to Information (RTI) to a Pune-based RTI applicant. The amount of Rs 2.05 lakh crore was collectively owed by nearly 2,500 defaulters. As per details provided, a large amount of money was defaulted by a few defaulters.
As per the information, 28 defaulters alone owed more than Rs 1,000 crore and their collective amount due stood at Rs 64,031 crore while over 350 defaulters owning more than Rs 100 crores stood at nearly Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
Defaulter numbers low, amount owed high
Vivek Velankar, the RTI applicant, had also sought the list of defaulters provided by the State Bank of India (SBI) the the RBI. As per the information, amount owed by wilful defaulters of SBI stood at over Rs 27,000 crores as on March 31, 2023. The amount was owned by nearly 500 defaulters.
Small number of defaulters owing large sums of money remained high even when the amount was less than Rs 1,000 crore. As per information, those owing between Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 crore stood at over 30. They collectively owed Rs 22,545 crores to nationalised banks. People owing money in the same range to SBI stood at six while they collectively owed SBI Rs 3,948 crores.
Ratio of amount owed and by the number of people who owed the amount between Rs 100 to Rs 500 crores was similar. In case of nationalised banks, the amount owed by defaulters who were to give between Rs 100 to Rs 500 crores stood over Rs 53,000 crores by nearly 240 defaulters. In case of SBI, total default amount in the same range stood at over Rs 11,300 crores by nearly 50 defaulters.
Velankar's RTI
Some of the defaulters figured both in the list of SBI as well as other nationalised banks. "It is surprising how lay people who seek a meagre amount as compared to these defaulters have to run around so much while these defaulters manage to get money from different nationalised banks. Some of these who are common in the list owe over Rs 4,400 crore with SBI while to other nationalised banks they owe Rs 22,117 crore," said Vivek Velankar.
He added, "Despite them having capacity to pay, they seemed to have wilfully defaulted and siphoned off money. RBI should ideally put this detail in public domain for all to see as per suo motu disclosure instead of citizens seeking the same under RTI. Such high amounts cannot be given unless cleared by the board of the respective banks. Someone needs to fix the responsibility on those clearing such high amounts of loans. ED and CBI should be put after them and the amount that is not recovered even after going to NCLT should be recovered from them."
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