Reacting to the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling giving the RBI a ‘last opportunity’ to provide details under the Right to Information Act of the top 100 defaulters, the Congress on Sunday hit out at the Narendra Modi government.
The party accused the government of influencing the RBI to withhold the defaulters’ list and audit reports on the co-operative institutions in Gujarat.
Addressing a press conference here, Rajya Sabha MP and Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the quantum of non-performing assets (NPA) has increased at least five times.
“Under this regime, NPAs of scheduled commercial banks rose from 2.5 lakh crore to 10.36 lakh crore from March 2014 to March 2018, that is five times in four years,” Mr. Singhvi said.
PIL appeal
Flagging the Supreme Court ruling pulling up the Reserve Bank of India for not abiding by the apex court’s judgment of 2015, asking it to make public the list of top 100 defaulters, he said the RBI was working on the directions of the government. Mr. Modi wants to protect his capitalist friends, Mr. Singhvi alleged.
A judgment in response to a bunch of public interest litigation petitions filed in the apex court had directed the RBI to disclose the list of the 100 largest defaulters and the audit and inspection reports of named private sector and public sector banks and Gujarat co-operative societies.
“The RBI has procrastinated and made excuses. It takes only 30 seconds to reveal the already published reports,” Mr. Singhvi said.
“Why is the RBI not disclosing these details? Why is the government of India not giving a directive to the RBI to disclose the same. Is it because you [Mr. Modi] have much to hide? Nobody is asking for the defaulters to be sent to jail but the applicant is only asking for names,” he added.
