Top 50 wilful defaulters in India owe Rs 92,570 crore to banks: MoS Karad

Karad also said that in the last five years, the banks in India have written off loans worth Rs 10.1 trillion

As of March, top 50 wilful defaulters in India owed Rs 92,570 crore to the banks, Minister of state for finance Bhagwat Karad told the Lok Sabha on Monday. At Rs 7,848 crore, Gitanjali Gems, founded by now-fugitive businessman Mehul Choksi, was the biggest defaulter. 

Era Infra Engineering (Rs 5,879 crore), Rei Agro (Rs 4,803 crore), Concast Steel and Power (Rs 4,596 crore), ABG Shipyard (Rs 3,708 crore), Frost International (Rs 3,311 crore), Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery (Rs 2,931 crore), Rotomac Global (Rs 2,893 crore), Coastal Projects (Rs 2,311 crore) and Zoom Developers (Rs 2,147 crore) are the other big wilful defaulters.

Wilful defaulters have the ability to repay the loans, but they are unwilling to do so. 

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), defaulters are not allowed to take new loans and set up new ventures for five years, as reported in the Financial Express (FE). The Centre has brought in a law to bring fugitive wilful defaulters under India's legal net. 

In a written reply to another question, Karad said that in the last five years, the banks in India have written off loans worth Rs 10.1 trillion.

The SBI has written off bad loans worth Rs 19,666 crore in 2021-22, followed by Union Bank of India which has written off bad loans worth Rs 19,484 crore, Punjab National Bank (Rs 18,312 crore), Bank of Baroda (Rs 17,967 crore), Bank of India (Rs 10,443 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 10,148 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs 9,405 crore), Axis Bank (Rs 9,126 crore), Indian Bank (Rs 8,347 crore), and Canara Bank (Rs 8,210 crore), he said.

The public sector banks have recovered an aggregate amount of Rs 4.8 trillion, including a recovery of Rs 1.03 trillion from written-off loans during the last five financial years, Karad added.