Parliamentary panel pulls up SBI, PNB chiefs over bank NPA's

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance headed by Verappa Moily today asked the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) to prepare a road map for addressing the issue of mounting bad loans and also posed queries on the alleged "nepotism" by ICICI MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar in a loan to Videocon Group.

During a meeting it was emphasised that corporates should not be painted with a same brush as all are not wilful defaulters, said sources.

Non-performing assets (NPAs) touched Rs 8.31 lakh crore at end-December 2017.


Top officials of public and private sector banks today briefed a parliamentary committee on non-performing assets and banking frauds. At the end of the brief, the MPs arrived at the conclusion that the PNB fraud was an 'operational failure'.


The legislators also raised questions on the entire Nirav Modi episode and sought an explanation from them.

Among others, SBI Chairperson Rajnish Kumar and PNB MD Sunil Mehta briefed the panel on various aspects of non-performing assets (NPAs) and banking frauds.

The meeting was called after the RBI governor Urjit Patel had said the Central Bank did not have adequate powers to deal with public sector banks. The committee was earlier briefed by Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar about issues related to the banking sector.

Listing out other reasons for PNB fraud, RBI governor, Urjit Patel on the 14th of March broke his silence, putting up a blistering defence for the regulator and sought to put the onus on the finance ministry instead.

Indian Banks' Association has top officials of all the major banks in the country as its member.

Earlier, bankers appearing before a different parliamentary panel had said the 180-day resolution plan for NPAs under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) was not an adequate window.

They had also suggested the emphasis should be on restructuring the stressed assets and that referring cases for resolution under the IBC should be the last option.