Spokesperson: Ms. SupriyaShrinate: She said that in the last five years alone, the government has written off about Rs. 10 lakh crores. Only 13 per cent of that write off has been recovered, which amounts to about Rs. 1.3 lakh crore.

So, the very obvious question is that why such huge amount of debt being written off and why is only 13 per cent of that being recovered? Because cheer leaders of this government will tell you that I am misleading and this is actually not a loan waiver, but a write off. This is as good as loan waiver, because you are being able to receive only 13 per cent of the write off, but, this misery about missing EMIs only haunts India’s middle class.

There is also something very amiss that is happening in the IBC and NCLT. There was a time, when banks were little wary of writing off debt, because they were answerable to the RBI and to the Ministry of Finance, but, today banks get together, they form a committee of creditors, a plan for resolution comes to them, they approve that plan, it goes to the NCLT, the moment NCLT approves that plan, corporate borrowers are absolved of their liability, because NCLT has given them a clean chit and haircuts to the tune of 70-80-90 per cent are being taken, simply put that means a loan that was about a thousand crores written off. You can pay about hundred, two hundred crores, settle that loan and live happily ever after and that asset is being transferred at throw away prices to cronies of this government. There are numerable cases that I can begin talking about in the NCLT and IBC where this has happened.

So, this does raise very important questions on why banks are doing this.

It is also important to point out here that NPA under the Modi government has gone up by 365 per cent. It used to be Rs. 5 lakh crores between 2008 to 2014, those 6 years, it has risen to over Rs. 18 lakh crores in the first 6 years of the Modi government. That is the available data and so I am quoting number from 2014 to 2020.

Willful defaulters, that number has gone up from Rs. 23,000 crores to Rs. 2.4 lakh crores and one will raise questions that who are these people, who are defaulting willfully and not being brought to book and the guilty just runs away, because it is not just Mehul Choksi or Nirav Modi or Vijay Mallya, 38 fraudsters and swindlers, who have swindled money from you and I, have fled this country under the watch of Prime Minister Modi and all attempts to bring them back and produce them before courts or bring the guilty to book have gone amiss.

So, the crucial questions continue to remain:

Why a write off of over Rs. 10 lakh crores? Why are recoveries of only 13 per cent? What about the rest of the money? Who are these corporates, who are benefitting from this? Why are their names not being made public? Why is it that PSU banks are being allowed unbridled power to take haircuts and transfer assets at throwaway prices?

It is obviously discretionary. It is obviously arbitrary and more than anything else is there a watch on them? Is it being probed, how they are doing this? Those are the real questions that remain. Tuesday, November 22, 2022