SBI panel to submit report on Shyamal Acharya by the weekend: Rajiv Takru

MUMBAI: Financial services secretary Rajiv Takru on Wednesday said the in-house panel constituted by SBI to probe corruption charges against one of its senior most deputy managing directors Shyamal Acharya, who was sent out on forced leave since then, will submit its report by weekend.

Takru, who is on the board of the bank as government nominee, also said it is wrong to blame the high bad assets in PSU banks to corrupt and lax practices in the loan appraisal process and ruled out changing the existing laws and procedures of working of banks.

“What has happened is most unfortunate. SBI has come out with their own internal committee and we expect the report of the committee by weekend,” he told reporters after a meeting at RBI.

On asked about the prevalence of high NPAs — some state-run banks have reported gross NPAs at over 7% while in SBI, it is over 5% — and if it can be attributed to corrupt practices in loan sanctioning process, Takru said that would be “speculative”. “NPAs are rising for a variety of reasons which you know,” he added.

He said these allegations do not merit changing any of the laws and procedures of working of state-run banks. “If anybody is guilty, surely you don’t expect the government to say nothing should be done. If he is guilty, certainly, the law will take its course. But I think its a bit premature, we should not speculate on this,” Takru said.