As the Opposition on Tuesday tried to corner the Government in the Rajya Sabha over rising number of non-performing assets (NPA) of banks in the last few years, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said bulk of such cases came up before April 1,2014. He said the situation arose due to aggressive lending by banks without proper risk assessment and even without being backed by securities.
Fielding questions, the minister also said the government and banks have not written loans by willful defaulters when the Elders claimed some corporate houses got away after their loans were waived off.
Jaitley said the liability of the borrower remains. Raising the issue, Neeraj Shekhar(SP) asked the government to spell out steps taken to initiate probe against NPAs and said the amount now had risen more than Rs nine lakh crore. Associating himself with the issue, P Chidambaram(Congress) asked Jaitley to reveal the amount of NPAs after the NDA Government came to power in May 2014. He was apparently claiming that the NPAs rose in the last three years and asked whether performing loans as on March 31, 2014, have become non-performing later and whether that is a scam.
Taking on record the minister's claim that earlier the regulation was lax and the asset regulation value has now been made stricter, Chidambaram asked whether the minister has the data now or will he furnish it to the House later as to how many loans given by banks after April 1, 2014 have become NPA today. Jaitley shot back and said most of the NPA cases came up before April 1, 2014.
As regards spike in the amount of NPAs in the last three years, Jaitley clarified that in 2015, the RBI reviewed asset quality of all banks and found many such assets shown as performing assets in the accounts had been non- performing and should be accounted as NPAs.