According to the information issued by The Reserve Bank of India, the number of defaulters who have not repaid loans amounting to Rs 1 crore or more each during the last 15 years is as high as 50300. This figure has not emerged from the RBI as its regular press release. It has been made in response to a query under the Right to Information Act. This information forced out of the RBI is also inaccurate. It fails to give an idea of the actual amount of default. Even if all 50300 have defaulted to the tune of not more than one crore, the amount in default indirectly admitted by the RBI is not less than 50300 crores.
The RBI has not thought it necessary to mention smaller defaulters whose amount of default has been lesser than one crore. If we believe the figures available with the All India Bank Employees Association that unlike the RBI regularly publishes the reports on such wilful defaulters and that is due to come out with the latest default figures next month, the amount in default is whopping 75 lakh crores. These wilful defaulters dealing in crores are sitting on 7500 rupees from the pocket of every single Indian.
It is also a known fact that a “wilful loan defaulter” in one bank “manages” to get a loan from another bank because the other bank does not verify, for the reasons not difficult to guess, whether that person or party figures in the list of defaulters which the RBI circulates in the banking industry. Again if we believe the All India Bank Employees Association, the 40% of this defaulted amount is from Maharashtra. This is happening in a country where hundreds of farmers have committed suicide because they defaulted on their paltry debts. The new Chief Minister of Maharashtra and his deputy Ajit Pawar are keen to root out corruption in Maharashtra. It will be interesting to see how they react to this information.
Dr Mookhi Amir Ali
Mumbai, M.S.