There is no information about loans of the top 100 defaulters and wilful defaulters that banks had written off: RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said it has no information about loans of the top 100 defaulters and wilful defaulters that banks had written off, just over four months after it had put the total write-off of the largest 50 wilful defaulters at Rs. 68,600 crore.

"The information sought is not available with us," the RBI said in a recent response to an RTI petition in which the activist had sought details on the loans that had been written off, along with the amount that each of the 100 defaulters and wilful defaulters had owed to banks and the period when the loans to them had been sanctioned and disbursed.

According to the petitioner, he had filed two petitions since April seeking details from the RBI on wilful defaulters. However the RBI refused to divulge any details both the times saying that it did not have any information.

"No defaulter information is collected as such by us," the RBI  said, responding to another query, which was part of an RTI petition.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that outstanding debt was written off as per RBI rules of a four-year provisioning cycle for non-performing assets. Write-off is a technical process by which banks clean their bad loans from their balance sheets. But they can still recover the loans.

"The words "write-off" and "waive off" are not specifically defined in RBI guidelines," the RBI said in its August 31 response to another query by Goswami.

"The applicant is advised that any expression unless defined in the RBI circular has the same meaning as has been assigned to them under the Banking Regulation Act or the Reserve Bank of India Act or any statutory modification or re-enactment thereto or as used in commercial parlance, as the case may be," the RBI said.