Can a bank discriminate against a politician when it comes to offering a loan? That’s what Dr. Boora Narsaiah Goud, a first-time lawmaker from Telangana, asked in the Lok Sabha last Thursday, while participating in a debate on the merger of State Bank of India’s subsidiary banks with the parent company.
Mr. Goud now plans to take up the issue with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. “I will be writing to him to ask if politicians have low creditworthiness,” he told The Hindu .
It is an interesting question to ask at a time when public sector banks are struggling with NPAs to the tune of ₹6.8 lakh crore.
A well-known laparoscopic surgeon in Hyderabad, Dr. Goud had applied for a loan from one of the biggest private banks in April this year.
He claims though the bank had ‘initially approved’ the amount he had asked for, it went back on it after senior management executives discovered that he had become a member of Parliament.
“When my source of income, tax details are the same, how can they discriminate just because I am now a politician? Under what law can they do this?” asks the Telangana Rashtra Samithi member who represents Bhuvanagiri constituency.
Dr. Goud also claimed that banks have an “unwritten rule not to easily offer loans to professionals like lawyers and policemen.”
Senior bankers The Hindu spoke to declined to speak on record but admitted that individuals seeking loans are categorised into ‘high risk’ and ‘low risk’ categories.
“You do get categorised as per job profile. A politician is considered a higher risk than a salaried employee. I don’t know about refusal but people with high risk need an additional level of check,” said a senior banker who didn’t wish to be quoted.
Bankers say loans are business decisions that are usually based on data, history of loan repayment and possibility of recovery. Most loans these days are approved by an algorithm-based software.
