A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi described non-performing assets (NPA) as a legacy of the previous UPA regime, and alleged that loans were given over a phone call to industrialists because of their proximity to a particular family, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Sunday asked, “How many of these loans were renewed after May 2014.”
In a series of tweets, Mr. Chidambaram asked the Modi government to state how many of the loans given by the NDA government had become NPAs and questioned why it did not recall the loans given by the previous government.
“Let’s assume that PM is right when he says that loans given under UPA have turned bad. How many of those loans were renewed or rolled over (that is ‘evergreened’) under NDA? Why were those loans not recalled? Why were those loans evergreened,” Mr. Chidambaram asked.
On Saturday, the Prime Minister, while inaugurating the India Post Payments Bank, blamed the Congress-led UPA government for the NPAs.
Modi’s charges
“Whichever rich industrialists wanted a loan would get naamdaars (dynasts) to make a phone call. Bank executives would then promptly give these loans as the phone calls from the naamdaars were above rules and regulations. This phone banking of Congress and its naamdaars caused a lot of damage to the country,” Mr. Modi said.
He said his government had initiated action against 12 large defaulters who had a combined debt of nearly ₹2 lakh crore on loans that were given before 2014.
Similarly, the Prime Minister said, efforts were being made to recover dues from 27 large loan accounts that had a debt of ₹1 lakh crore.
Countering him, Mr. Chidambaram sought the data on bad loans after the Modi government assumed charge in May 2014.
“How many loans and how much that were given after May 2014 have become non-performing assets? This question was asked in Parliament but there is no answer so far,” he said.