Wilful defaulters owe more than Rs 64,300 crore to public sector banks and 115 cases have emerged where bank officials connived with the borrowers, the government said today.
Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha informed the Lok Sabha that as of now, total NPAs across the entire banking system for scheduled commercial banks are Rs 3.47 lakh crore, even as he noted that the government is cognisant of the challenging situation due to non-performing assets (NPAs).
Providing details of wilful defaulters who have borrowed over Rs 25 lakh from various public sector banks, Sinha said there have been 7,265 such defaulters at the end of September.
The total defaulted loans by them stood at Rs 64,334.59 crore and FIRs have been filed in 1,624 cases involving a total amount of Rs 16,601.90 crore, the Minister said during Question Hour.
Sinha said that in 115 cases, banks have reported connivance of bank officials with the borrowers.
The data has been compiled from inputs provided by the public sector banks.
As of September 30, 2015, State Bank of India (SBI) had maximum number of wilful defaulters at 1,164 who owed Rs 11,705 crore to the lender.
SBI was followed by Punjab National Bank with 764 wilful defaulters who have defaulted a total of Rs 9,203.84 crore.
Central Bank of India had 723 wilful defaulters, followed by Union Bank of India (657), UCO Bank (613) and Canara Bank (480 such borrowers).
In absolute terms, PNB is followed by Central Bank of India with such accounts having outstanding loan of Rs 4,272.04 crore.
As far as UCO Bank is concerned, it had loan outstanding of Rs 3,931.37 crore.
"The government has taken a comprehensive multi-dimension approach" to deal with the NPA problem, Sinha said, adding that along with the Reserve Bank of India, the government is taking very precise steps to deal with the problem.
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Asked about the action taken by the government with regard to loan default by grounded Kingfisher Airlines, Sinha said all relevant actions were being taken and investigation is going on.
With regard to steps taken by the government to help people affected by floods in Tamil Nadu, Sinha said that among others, insurers have been asked to quickly settle claims of such people.
In a written reply, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said RBI in July issued guidelines on wilful defaulters to disincentivise borrowers who have money and do not pay or have diverted or siphoned off the funds or removed assets given as security.
