The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Reserve Bank of India to provide a list of companies which have defaulted on bank loans worth over Rs. 500 crore.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur asked the top bank to provide in six weeks the list of companies whose loans have been restructured under corporate debt restructuring schemes.
Directing that the list be placed on record in a sealed cover, the apex court asked how State-owned banks and financial institutions were advanc-ing huge loans without proper guidelines and whether there was adequate mechanism to recover them.
The court made RBI party to a PIL petition filed in 2005 by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) in which it raised the issue of loans advanced to some companies by State-owned Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for CPIL, submitted that about Rs. 40,000 crore of corporate debt was written off in 2015.
“You have a list of major defaulters who run empires and yet default,” the Bench said during the hearing.
While passing the order, the court took note of media reports about bad loans or non-performing assets (NPA) and the inability of the banks to recover them.
