Nirmala Sitharaman rebuts Rahul Gandhi, says outstanding debt written off as per RBI rules

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the outstanding debt was written off as per RBI rules of a four-year provisioning cycle for non-performing assets (NPAs), responding to questions about RBI’s reply to a right to information (RTI) query about the top 50 wilful defaulters in the banking system, via Twitter on Tuesday.

Countering allegations from the Congress, the minister said they were misleading and sensationalising facts by taking them out of context. Sitharaman said banks write-off NPAs after they are fully provisioned for, but this does not amount to waiving of the loans.

On Monday, the RBI’s reply to the RTI query showed that these defaulters owe Rs 68,607 crore up to September 30, 2019, which was written off by the banks. However, the RBI said overseas borrowers were exempt from disclosure.


As per the RBI rules, such write-offs are technical or prudential and it does not mean the entire loan has been written off, as some loans have been taken against security, which can be or has already been recovered.

According to the RBI’s response, Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems tops the list with Rs 5,492 crore written off. Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines is in the top-10 list with a write-off of Rs 1,943 crore.

Strongly rebutting congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s accusation that the finance minister did not answer his question on the top 50 wilful defaulters in Parliament as they were “friends of the BJP”, Sitharaman said, “It is the Narendra Modi government which is pursuing these wilful defaulters. 9,967 recovery suits, 3,515 FIRs, invoking Fugitive Amendment Act in cases are on now. Total value of attachment & seizures in the cases of Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya us Rs 18332.7 crore,” in a tweet.