NEW DELHI: Former Union minister P Chidambaram on Saturday said the Yes Bank fiasco had been triggered by “mismanagement” of financial institutions under the BJP government.

Demanding a thorough probe into the collapse of the bank and fixing of accountability by RBI, he said it was “bizarre” that SBI was being asked to invest Rs 2,450 crore to pick up a 49% stake in the crisis-ridden bank under the government-approved bailout plan. “I don’t get the impression that SBI is a volunteer in this rescue act just as the LIC was not in the case of IDBI Bank ,” he said. He also slammed RBI for failing to notice that Yes Banks loan books were swelling at a rate of 35% per annum when the rest of the banking sector loans were increasing only in the range of 9.5-10%.

Yes Bank indulging in loan giving spree “isn’t banking but buccaneering”, Chidambaram said, adding that the loan book of Yes Bank was allowed to grow and jump manifold between March 2014 and 2019. “When we demitted office, the loan book of Yes Bank was Rs 55,633 crore. It climbed to Rs 2,41,499 crore in March 2019. I was not the finance minister during this period. So the finance minister should explain how this was allowed to be done,” he said.

Responding to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman ’s charge that bad loans were created in the UPA regime, Chidambaram said bank mergers under the UPA regime and when YV Reddy was the RBI governor had ensured that “every penny” of the investors’ money was safe and returned to the beneficiaries.

Congress also asked whether RBI and government were aware that the bank was on a loan-giving spree.

