MUMBAI: A day before Friday’s crucial central bank board meeting, railway minister Piyush Goyal criticised the functioning of the regulator under the previous governor Urjit Patel for “sudden” changes to the bad-loans management framework.“If you change the ground rules of the game in between and throttle the banking system, who is the sufferer? The people of India….the businesses of India,” Goyal said during a free-wheeling discussion with the Times Network at the India Economic Conclave in Mumbai on Thursday.“Would you not want the government to at least ask a question ‘What prompts you to change the rules halfway through the game?’ Did you discuss it with anybody….were any experts consulted …are they (changes) comparable with international norms?” the minister asked, referring to sudden amendments to the Prompt Corrective Action ( PCA ) framework.Goyal said that the PCA had its conditions changed on April 1, 2017. The amended PCA has been blamed for crimping the ability of several state-run banks to enhance credit flow to borrowers, limiting broader economic growth, and impeding the creation of jobs. The original PCA framework, a set of prudential norms for commercial banking, was enacted during the tenure of the previous NDA administration.The board of the RBI, which had a new governor this week, meets on Friday after Shaktikanta Das replaced Urjit Patel, who resigned abruptly four days before the meeting.He also criticized the Opposition for spreading “canards” about the NDA government seeking to forcibly tweak the PCA framework and nudging the central bank into transferring its surplus reserves to bail out the same people that demonetisation had affected. Goyal also claimed that former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan ’s statements surrounding central bank autonomy and role of the RBI board in the light of Patel’s resignation were motivated by a desire for a “political career.” However, he did not name Rajan.Goyal said that RBI’s changes to the PCA framework consisted of drastically increasing the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) to 9% (from 6% earlier), higher than even Basel III norms that stipulated an 8% CAR of risk weighted assets and current liabilities.The second change put a bank under PCA if net NPAs as a proportion of total loans exceeded 6% from the earlier 10%. He termed the third change the “worst” as it stipulated that a bank had to be profitable for two consecutive years to escape the PCA net against the earlier rule of having an RoA below 0.25%.