A total of 14 financial dispute cases were settled in-principle at the eighth Lok Adalat conducted at the Debts Recovery Tribunal (DRT) here on Thursday with Rs. 1.89 crore being the amount recovered.
A total of 38 cases involving public and private sector banks, besides financial institutions, were taken up. Further, 38 pre-litigation cases were also taken up with five cases settled in-principle and Rs. 15 lakh being recovered.
While eight cases of the Indian Bank involving a total suit amount of Rs. 4.43 crore was settled with Rs. 78.30 lakh being recovered. Five cases of the Lakshmi Vilas Bank involving a total suit amount of Rs. 1.45 crore was settled with Rs. 1.07 crore being recovered. One case of Punjab National Bank was taken up involving a total suit amount of Rs. 6.09 lakh with Rs. 4 lakh being recovered.
Besides the Lok Adalat members — T.P. Parameswaran, retired district court judge, J.S. Arthur, social worker, and V. Ramalingam, advocate — the General Manager of Indian Bank, K. Natarajan, and M. Kathiresan, Deputy General Manager and Madurai Circle Head, were present.
Addressing the people who had come for dispute settlement, D. Stanley David, Presiding Officer of the DRT, said that banks had been very cooperative in conducting such mediation efforts. The DRT was working towards dispensing solutions in which no one ended as the loser.
Mr. Natarajan said that several such meetings and arbitration efforts were being taken up in the past 10 years. He appealed to the customers to utilise this opportunity to obtain a win-win solution. This would ensure that neither the bank nor the customers felt having lost out.
He also said that that once the DRT gave an award, the customers must honour it at the earliest and within the stipulated time, failing which they were obligated to pay the entire amount owed. The banks, he said, needed the money owed by the customers as they had to lend to new customers. A total of 16 cases of the Indian Bank involving around Rs. 13 crore were taken up during the proceedings.
