The Centre ducked a tricky question in Parliament when asked whether the scheduled commercial banks had written off loans worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the first nine months of the year.

Minister of state for finance Bhagwat Karad said the banks had written off Rs 46,382 crore in the first six months.

Under Section 45E of the RBI Act, the banks were prohibited from publicly disclosing credit information relating to large corporate borrowers and these had to be treated as “confidential”, Karad said.

The minister said non-performing loans, including, inter-alia, 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..

Banks evaluate/consider the impact of write-offs as part of their regular exercise to clean up their balance-sheet, avail of tax benefit and optimise capital, in accordance with the RBI guidelines and policy approved by their boards.

The borrowers of written-off loans continue to be liable for repayment and the process of recovery of dues from the borrower in written-off loan accounts continues.

Banks continue to pursue recovery actions initiated

in written-off accounts through various recovery mechanisms available, such as filing of a suit in civil courts or in Debts Recovery Tribunals, action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enxforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002.

Other steps include the filing of cases in the NCLT under the IBC 2016.