NPA biggest scam of UPA government: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that the NPA (Non Performing Asset) was the biggest scam of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government.

He made these remarks while addressing the 90th FICCI Annual General Meeting (AGM) here.

"The hullabaloo over the NPAs is the biggest liability given to our government by the economists of the previous (UPA) government. NPA was the biggest scam of the UPA government. It was the much bigger scam than Commonwealth, 2G, Coal block allocation scams," Prime Minister Modi said.

He also questioned the silence of the organisations like FICCI over it.

"Then loans worth lakhs of crore were given to few big industrialists by putting pressure on the banks. When people were quite over the scam then did any organisation try to awake them? What were organisations like FICCI doing when few people in previous government were putting pressure on the banks to provide loans to few select businessmen? asked Prime Minister Modi.

He said everyone knew what wrong was going on but nobody objected to it.

"People in previous government knew, banks knew, industries knew, organisations related to the market knew about the wrongdoing," he said.

In February, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had told Lok Sabha that the pile of NPAs in the banking system at present was a legacy problem and most large ticket size loans that have turned NPA were given to big companies between 2007 and 2009.