Top 50 wilful defaulters owe ₹92,570 crore to banks, govt tells Parliament

India’s top 50 wilful defaulters owed ₹92,570 crore to the country’s banks as of March 31, 2022, the government informed the Parliament.

Citing RBI data, the government said that fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems Limited tops the list as it has defaulted on loans worth ₹7,848 crore.

Bhagwat Karad, the minister of state for finance, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha, said that Era Infra (₹5879 crore) and Reigo Agro (₹4803 crore) were second and third respectively on the list of top 50 wilful defaulters.

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A wilful defaulter is a financial term used for borrowers who have the means to pay the loan back but don’t. These borrowers are debarred from any facility of banks or other financial institutions.

Other companies on the list include Concast Steel and Power (₹4,596 crore), ABG Shipyard (₹3,708 crore), Frost International ₹3,311 crore), Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery ₹2,931 crore), Rotomac Global (₹2,893 crore), Coastal Projects ₹2,311 crore) and Zoom Developers (₹2,147 crore).

A wilful default occurs when a defaulting borrower doesn’t honour an obligation, despite having the capacity to pay, or siphoning off funds and disposing of assets without the knowledge of the bank, according to RBI.

Also read: 38 wilful defaulters fled country in a span of 5 years, says finance ministry

Last week, the CBI filed three fresh FIRs against absconding Choksi on a complaint from the Punjab National Bank (PNB) bringing to light an additional ₹6,746 crore loss incurred by it and other consortium banks.

Four years after his dramatic escape and failure of state-run PNB to detect the scam between 2010 and 2018, it filed three complaints with the CBI on March 21, reporting the additional loss caused by Choksi and his firm Gitanjali Gems Ltd, Nakshatra Brands Ltd and Gili India Ltd.

The Punjab National Bank (PNB) and other members of the consortium had extended credit facilities to these companies.

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Karad also said that banks have written off ₹11.17 lakh crore bad loans from their books in the last six years till financial year 2021-22.

The non-performing assets (NPAs), including those in respect of which full provisioning has been made on completion of four years, are removed from the balance sheet of the bank concerned by way of write-off, he said in the written reply.

Banks write off NPAs as part of their regular exercise to clean up their balance sheet, avail tax benefit and optimise capital, he said, adding, the write-off is carried out by the banks in accordance with RBI guidelines and policy approved by their boards.

“As per RBI data, public sector banks (PSBs) and scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) wrote off an aggregate amount of Rs 8,16,421 crore and Rs 11,17,883 crore respectively during the last six financial years,” he said.

With regard to the list, including names of write-offs/defaulters who have defaulted more than ₹1 crore to the public sector banks, RBI has informed that borrower-wise information on written-off loan accounts is not maintained by it, he said.

In reply to another question, Karad said, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has informed that the total number of wilful defaulters each having outstanding loan of ₹25 lakh and above in public sector banks was 8,045 as on June 30, 2017 and 12,439 as on June 30, 2022; whereas in private sector bank, it was 1,616 as on June 30, 2017 and 2,447 as on June 30, 2022.

He further said, “RBI has informed that as on 30.6.2017, there were 8,744 suit-filed wilful defaulters and 917 non-suit-filed wilful defaulters in public and private sector banks, and as on 30.6.2022, the same stands at 14,485 and 401 respectively.”

The list of suit-filed wilful defaulters of ₹25 lakh and above is available in the public domain on the websites of the Credit Information Companies (CICs) and that of non-suit filed wilful defaulters is confidential in nature and are not in public domain.

(With agency inputs)