Bank loan defaulters in India: 2623 people defrauded banks of Rs 1.96 lakh crore

Common people have to go through a lot of trouble to get a loan from the bank and if one misses even one installment, the banks make his life difficult. Their credit score is also affected.

But there are 2623 such people in the country who have siphoned off Rs 1.96 lakh crore of various banks and did not even belch. Banks have not yet been successful in extracting money from these willful defaulters. These 2623 willful defaulters have Rs 5 crore or more stuck with the banks.

The government has told in the Lok Sabha that in the last 5 years, all the commercial banks have written off loans worth about Rs 10.6 lakh crore. About 50% of the loans written off are of big industrial houses.

Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said that as per RBI guidelines, after completion of four years of NPA, the bad loans are written off by full provisioning and are removed from the balance sheet of the bank.

In the last 5 years, cases of fraud worth more than Rs 20 thousand crore have come to light in banks. The government has told in Parliament that 782 cases of bank fraud have been reported in the last 5 years. Bhagwat Karad has said that ED has investigated 782 cases of bank fraud under the PMLA (Money Laundering) Act between January 1, 2019 and October 1, 2023. An amount of Rs 20,398 crore has been seized in the action taken against bank fraud. Besides, 74 accused have also been arrested.

In this proposal, the Central Bank (RBI) has defined as willful defaulters those people who have an outstanding bank loan of Rs 25 lakh or more and despite being able to repay it, they are deliberately not repaying the loan is called a willful defaulter. In India, the outstanding dues of willful defaulters i.e. those who deliberately do not repay bank loans (willful defaulters) increased by about Rs 50 thousand crore by March 2023 as compared to March 2022. In March 2022, such amount was Rs 3,04,063 crore in 14,899 accounts, which reached Rs 3,53,874 crore in 16,883 accounts by March 2023.