Bank employees’ association releases list of defaulters
The All India Bank Employees Association, a left-sponsored trade union representing the banking sector, has come out with a list of over 400 corporate defaulters who jointly owe 24 public sector banks a whopping Rs 70,300 crore.
As on 31 March 2013, 406 corporate houses across the country have defaulted on their loans amounting to Rs 70,300 crore.
The list of 406 defaulters include Kingfisher Airlines owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, lanco, a construction firm owned by prominent Congress leaders, Deccan Chronicle, a Hyderabad-based newspaper owned by powerful Congress leaders from Andhra Pradesh, Birla Surya ltd, lavasa, New Chennai Township and Zoom Developers.
Kingfisher Airlines owe the public sector banks more than Rs 2,673 crore while Deccan Chronicle owes more than Rs 700 crore. The AIBEA is of the view that there exists a strong nexus between some of the corporate houses, politician and bankers of the country.
“The Reserve Bank of India has termed the bad loans as Non-Performing Assets (NPA) because these loans are the assets owned by the banks. But these NPAs turn out to be bad loans when corporate houses which availed these loans refuse to pay it back under some pretext. We are forced to come out with the list of defaulters as the RBI considers this list as sacrosanct and secret,” CH Venkitachalam, general secretary, AIBEA, told The Pioneer.
Venkitachalam decried the hypocrisy of the public sector banks which are over zealous in initiating legal proceedings against small and marginal farmers when they fail to pay back the small loans which they availed for farming operations.
“Many farmers commit suicide for fear of legal action by the banks. But these public sector banks which offer big amounts as loan to corporate houses maintain silence when the latter fail to pay it back. The wilful defaulters should be considered as criminal offenders and they should be tried under criminal laws. Right now, the defaulters are tried under civil laws which take decades to conclude,” he said.
A solution to address the NPA as well as bad loans is to set up exclusive fast track courts for the trial of such fraudulent actions, he said.
The AIBEA said the term NPA itself was a misnomer. “We should call it by the name bad loans. It is the money fraudulently siphoned off from the banking system. This money belongs to the common man of the country since it happens to be the hard-earned savings of the poor man,” he adds.