The number of wilful defaulters has increased by up to 60 per cent in the last five years, the government has said. Informing the Lok Sabha on Monday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said over Rs 7,600 crore had been recovered from these wilful defaulters in the last five years, in which as many as 8,121 recovery suits had been filed by the public sector banks. The FM's written reply said the total number of willful defaulters in FY15 stood at 5,349 while the number was 8,582 at the end of FY19.

A wilful defaulter is a person who has enough financial resources to repay the loan taken from banks but does not do so deliberately and deploys the borrowings for purposes other than intended. The government said the action was taken in 6,251 cases under the provisions of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002, while FIRs had been lodged in as many as 2,915 cases.

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The minister told the House that under the preventive measures, banks and other financial institutions couldn't sanction additional loan facilities to wilful defaulters and they were barred from floating any new venture for five years. As per the Sebi guidelines, wilful defaulters are also barred from accessing capital markets to raise funds. Sitharaman said the government's 4R strategy -- Recognition, Resolution, Recapitalisation and Reforms -- had led to greater identification of non-performing assets.

She said as per the RBI data on global operations, NPAs rose from Rs 2.79 lakh crore in FY15 to Rs 8.95 lakh crore in FY18, while the number declined to Rs 8.06-lakh crore in FY19. Sitharaman said PSBs had managed to recover about Rs 3.59 lakh crore from NPAs between FY16 and FY19. In the last fiscal alone, the total recovery stood at Rs 1.23 lakh crore, she said.  

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Edited by Manoj Sharma