In reply to a petition under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, Reserve Bank of India(RBI) said that Indian banks have written off loans amounting to Rs 68,607 of top 50 deliberate defaulters till September 30, 2019.
The list of wilful defaulters given out by RBI in response to a query filed by activist Saket Gokhale includes big names including those of fugitive offenders like Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya.
The RTI reply confirms that Choksi owned company Gitanjali Gems tops the list with a huge amount of Rs 5,492 crore, followed by REI Agro and Winsome Diamonds with Rs 4,314 crore and Rs 4,076 crore respectively.
Other companies that find a place in the list are Rotomac Global Private Limited, whose funded advances of ₹2,850 crores have been technically written off and Kudos Chemie Ltd with ₹2,326 crores, Ruchi Soya Industries Limited, now owned by Ramdev’s Patanjali, with ₹2,212 crores and Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd with ₹2,012 crores being the other companies.
Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines figures in the list at number 9, with outstanding of Rs 1943 crore which have been technically written off by the banks.
To this Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi had said that he had previously asked the government in Parliament the names of the top 50 bank loan defaulters but the finance minister did not answer his question to which the government had denied a response.
In his application, RTI activist Saket Gokhale had sought the list of defaulters as on February 16, but the RBI said the requested information is not available.
The RBI said that according to section 8 (1)(a) of RTI Act 2005 read with para 77 of Supreme Court judgement of December 16, 2015 in Jayantilal N Mistry case, information on overseas borrowers is exempted from public disclosure.
The financial condition of our country is in a devastating state. Hoping that the condition will improve and more and more profits will be gained.
