In a bid to reduce the Non Performing Assets (NPA) burden, the Uttarakhand government has decided to launch a ‘ one time settlement’ scheme for thousands of defaulters of cooperative bank loans. The 100 day scheme would start on July 1 this year. A decision in this respect was taken by the minister of state (independent charge) Dhan Singh Rawat while presiding over a meeting of cooperative department at his office in Vidhan Sabha on Monday. In last 25 years, the cooperative banks of the state have NPAs of Rs 391.50 crore. These banks undertook a special recovery campaign last month in which Rs 21 Crores were recovered from loan defaulters. The settlement scheme would start on July 1 and end on October 7. The minister clarified that the defaulters up to Rs 50 lakh would be able to avail benefit of the scheme. A total of 18465 accounts in different cooperative banks are categorised as NPA. The minister said that the NPA accounts have been divided into three categories. In the first category, the pending interest amount would be waived off completely from the account holders who have deposited the capital amount and the account holder has died.
In the second category under the ‘one time settlement scheme’ the account holders who have deposited interest equivalent to the capital, only remaining capital amount would be charged. In the third category, the department has kept the dubious account holders. These are those defaulters who have taken loan from other banks also and have kept papers of property mortgaged in different banks. Under the scheme only 30 percent interest along with capital would be charged from such account holders. In the meeting the Registrar of cooperatives BM Mishra, managing director of cooperative bank Dipak Kumar, additional registrar of cooperatives Anand Shukla, Ira Upreti and others were present.
Later talking to the media persons, the minister claimed that the ‘ one time settlement’ scheme would be beneficial for all stake holders. He expressed confidence that the scheme would be a huge success. Rawat further claimed that the NPAs of state cooperative banks is less than 5 per cent which is one of the best in the countries. He expressed confidence that the NPAs of other cooperative banks of the state would also be reduced and brought to the 5 per cent mark soon. The minister informed that the state government has hired a company which would digitise the records of cooperative banks in Uttarakhand. Initially the scheme would be launched in Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar as pilot project, he said.