Indian public sector were owed a total of Rs 66190 crore by way of wilful defaults at the end of calendar year 2015, data from the Ministry shows.

The numbers, which are broken down by PSBs, including the SBI Group, were released in the Rajya Sabha in response to a member’s question to be answered on April 26, 2016.

State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, topped the list with Rs 11,705 crore in wilful defaults, followed closely by Punjab National Bank, which had Rs 10869.72 crore in wilful defaults, and Central Bank of India with Rs 4408.52 crore.

The total outstanding of the top 100 non-performing accounts (NPAs) of PSBs stood at Rs 1,72,718 crore as on December end 2015.

The SBI Group has 1700 defaulters who account for Rs 18,666 crore in wilful defaults. Of this, SBI alone has 1164 wilful defaulters, or nearly 69% of the total. The SBI group comprises the State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, Hyderabad, India, Mysore, Patiala, and Travancore.

Discounting this group, other PSBs have Rs 47,524 crore in 5.986 wilful defaults. Suits have filed against 5202 wilful defaulters to recover Rs 43155 crore, while First Information Reports (FIR) have been filed against 1540 entities for Rs 16184 crore. As much as Rs 36,332 crore has been marked for Sarfaesi action, or repossession/sale of assets.

The SBI Group has filed 1614 suits to recover Rs 15345 crore and 129 FIRs for Rs 2027 crore, besides intiating Sarfaesi action against 1549 entities to recover Rs 17,075 crore.

In his reply, Minister Arun Jaitley noted that “The recovery in NPA accounts has increased from Rs 66,634 crore as at end March 2014 to Rs 74,130 crore as at end March 2015. Reserve Bank of India (RBI), regulator for banking sector, has taken various steps which include (i) Formation of Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) for revitalizing stressed assets in the system, (ii) Flexible Structuring for long term project loans to Infrastructure and Core industries, and (iii) Strategic Debt Restructuring (SDR) scheme.”



In addition, he noted, the central government has approved six new Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) to speed up recovery of loans, in addition to the existing 33.

A rising tide of NPAs among PSBs has prompted the Reserve Bank of India to crack down on state-run to clean up their books, and to set aside sufficient provisioning for bad loans. Public sector have been suspected of lending more to defaulters in hopes of getting their businesses back on track instead of marking them as bad loans.