The Central Information Commission (CIC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are at loggerheads over the apex bank’s refusal to reveal the details of top defaulters’ list as per the RTI Act. On September 23, the CIC had decided to take up the matter to the larger bench, after the RBI declined to reveal the banking details citing privacy norms and various cases of debtors pending before courts.
last year, the CIC had ordered the RBI to disclose the details of top defaulters to various banks under the RTI Act on a petition filed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal. But refusing to disclose the list, the RBI contended that apart from privacy norms, details of (NPA) Non-Performing Assets and defaulters details would hamper the attempts by banks to recover the money.
The RBI and other banks argued that as the customers and banks have entered fiduciary relationship, the privacy of bank account details can't be shared with third parties like the RTI applicant.
The RTI activist Agarwal's petition sought the details of each bank’s NPA, bank's attempts recover the NPA, the details of corporate defaulters and actions of banks against defaulters. “In present era when public-authorities like MCD are displaying names of tax-defaulters through big hoardings put on prominent road-crossings apart from highlighting these through newspaper-advertisements, it is in larger public-interest that defaulters of bank-loans may be highlighted by putting their names in public-domain.
“Otherwise also RBI gets all such information from banks in its role as supervisory and controlling authority with no question of treating sought information as fiduciary in nature. Rather public-interest demands that this information may be put on website and other publicity-channels like media-advertisements etc,” said the RTI activist.