West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday insinuated that the Centre is trying to protect bank defaulters by not disclosing credit information by a public sector bank.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo took to her official Facebook page to post a response to a question asked by Rajya Sabha MP Ritabrata Banerjee.
Banerjee said that the reply to the question asked in the Parliament left her “shocked”.
“I am shocked to see that at a time, when the farmers in the country are crying and committing suicide for their loan burden and asking for waiver of farmers’ loan, the Government of India have not even considered that [sic],” Banerjee wrote on Facebook underlining the numerous demands for farm load waivers from across the country.
The question asked by Ritabrata Banerjee was whether Rs 2.4 lakh crore amount of Public Sector banks (PSBs) loans of crony corporate have been written off by the present Union Government till September 2017.
In its response the Government admitted, “As per Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data on global operations, PSBs have written-off (including compromise) an amount of Rs 2,41,911 crore from financial year 2014-15 till September 2017.”
But the answer from the Ministry of Finance stated that loan writing-off is a regular exercise and that “borrowers of such written-off loans continue to be liable for repayment”.
“Recovery of dues takes place on ongoing basis,” said the MoF.
Reacting to the “unbelievable” answer, Mamata Banerjee said that her party had raised the issue of non-performing assets at the time of demonetisation.
“Now the cat is out of the bag and reality bites,” she wrote.
Banerjee demanded that the government immediately releases the complete list of defaulters of public sector banks whose loans have been written off.
“Why is this confidentiality? Whom is the Government trying to protect? Is it not a big, big, big scam? [sic]” she wrote.
Banerjee is one of the many opposition leaders who have attacked the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “not taking action” against defaulters such as Nirav Modi.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly questioned the PM’s “silence” on the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.