Govt Submits Indbank Scam Report To Sc

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the Union government to report on action taken by it on the Indnan Bank scam case.

The government, meanwhile, handed over several confidential documents regarding the scam to the Court during the resumed hearing of the public interest litigation.

They contain reports of enquiries made so far by authorities, including the Reserve Bank of India.

Earlier, senior counsel Anil Divan, appointed to assist the court, had handed over the confidential RBI note to the judges and the attorney general.

Attorney general Ashok Desai submitted that the documents, being confidential, should not be published. The judges took the sealed packets and returned the earlier set.

The bank scam was brought to the court by Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy who alleged the CBI and other government agencies had failed to perform their duty by not properly investigating into the Rs 2,000 crore loan fraud.

A three-judge bench consisting of Chief Justice J S Verma, Justice S C Aggarwal and Justice S P Bharucha, is monitoring the probe.

The RBI inquiry report was made available to the court following allegations by Divan during a hearing last week that there were over 20 non-performing accounts opened by the Bank and these had been done for political reasons.

Desai told the court that even before the public interest litigation had been filed before the court, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had asked the RBI to probe non-performing accounts in the Indian Bank and the RBI had completed its probe with respect to 40 such accounts.

Desai told the court that on the basis of the report, disciplinary action had been initiated against several officers with respect to some of the 40 accounts while inquiries were on with regard to others.

The judges told the attorney general that if the statutory agencies were performing their duties the court had no cause for worry.

However, the court would like to pursue the RBI as well as other probe reports in the bank scam case to satisfy itself of the efficiency of the agencies and in case there was some shortfall, it may have to initiate appropriate steps to rectify the situation.

The judges also asked the attorney general to give by the next hearing date on March 2, a report on developments in the case after the submission of the probe reports to the government.