Punjab and Haryana High Court has put Union of India on notice for non-functioning of Debt Recovery Tribunal-3 at Chandigarh.
The notice has been issued in a Public Interest litigation filed by Randhir Singh Badran, former chairman of Bar Council of Punjab and Haryana, wherein the petitioner has sought directions for the Ministry of finance and Commerce to decide the jurisdiction of DRT-3 at the earliest so that the tribunal may start working.
In the petition filed through advocate Sukhvinder Singh Nara, the petitioner has said that the DRT-3 had been lying defunct for months as its jurisdiction was yet to be decided by the Ministry. The petition says that the presiding officer Sanjeev Mago and the other staff in DRT 3 had been sitting idle, while the number of pendency was rising day by day.
Quoting data, the petitioner has said that there were more than 10000 cases pending with DRT-1 and DRT-2, while in the last year, both the tribunals could dispose around 1800 cases in all.
Terming the issue to be serious, the petitioner said that while the non-performing assets of nationalised banks has registered unprecedented rise in past few years and 66190 crore of public sector banks were blocked with willful defaulters, it was shocking that the Ministry of Finance and Commerce was making unwanted delay in making the tribunal functional.
He said that due to high pendency before recovery tribunals, the banks resort to apply pressure tactics to recover small loans from farmers and small entrepreneurs that gives rise to suicides by farmers while Rs 172718 crore of Public Sector Banks were pending with only 100 non-performing accounts up to December 15.
The petitioner said that due to inept functioning of Recovery Tribunals, the purpose of Recovery Act, 1994 was getting defeated and the banks resort to write off bad loans to the tune of 1.14 crore in last few years.
Seeking a reply from the UOI, through Ministry of Finance and Commerce, Division Bench of Justice S S Saron and Justice Gurmit Ram has adjourned the matter for August 10.