The Evening Wrap: Loans worth ₹10,09,511 crore written off in 5 years, says FM

Scheduled commercial banks have written off loans amounting to over ₹10.09 lakh crore in the last five financial years and the process of recovery of dues from the borrowers continues, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Lok Sabha on December 19. Sitharaman said recovery in NPA (non performing asset) accounts, including written-off loans, was an on-going process. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, public sector banks have recovered ₹4,80,111 crore, including ₹1,03,045 crore from written-off loans, during the last five financial years, she said. “As per inputs received from the RBI, scheduled commercial banks have written off an amount of ₹10,09,511 crore during the last five financial years,” Sitharaman said during Question Hour. 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, she added. Banks continue to pursue recovery actions initiated in written-off accounts through various recovery mechanisms available, Sitharaman added. The actions include filing of a suit in civil courts or in Debts Recovery Tribunals, action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002, filing of cases in the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, through negotiated settlement and compromise and sale of NPAs. “Therefore, write-off does not benefit the borrowers,” she said. The Minister said that according to RBI guidelines and policy approved by banks’ boards, NPAs, including those in respect of which full provisioning had been made on completion of four years, were removed from the balance sheet of the bank concerned by way of write-off. Banks evaluate and 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 RBI guidelines and policy approved by their boards, she said. Replying to a question, Sitharaman said the process of retrieving money of small depositors and investors from loan defaulters was very complicated as the legal process was lengthy and there were multiple claimants to the seized assets that included banks and other financial institutions. The Minister said she was aware of the depositors undergoing extreme difficulties and there was a need to look into the issue and how to simplify the process. Earlier, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad said names of loan defaulters were not disclosed due to RBI guidelines but their names could be disclosed once their assets were put up for auction. Bill to repeal over 60 old laws, rectify error in one introduced in LS A bill which seeks to repeal over 60 obsolete laws, including one enacted 137 years ago, was introduced in Lok Sabha on Monday. The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2022, also aims to correct a “patent error” in another law by replacing certain words. Piloted by Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, the bill is one of the periodical measures by which enactments which have ceased to be in force, or have become obsolete or their retention as separate Act is unnecessary, are repealed. Such bills also correct defects which are detected in laws. The bill proposes to repeal the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, 1885. It also seeks to repeal the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950. Under the law, “Whoever is found or is proved to have been in possession of any quantity of telegraph wires shall unless he proves that the telegraph wires came into his possession lawfully, be punishable, for the first offence, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine...” The bill also seeks to repeal certain Appropriation Acts passed by Parliament in the recent past. Once the principal Act is amended, the amendment laws lose relevance. Their presence in the statute books as independent laws becomes unnecessary and they only clog the system. According to the third schedule of the bill, in section 31A, in sub-section (3), for the words “that Central Government”, the words “that Government” will be substituted in The Factoring Regulation Act, 2011. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha last week, Rijiju had noted that 1,486 obsolete and redundant Central Acts have been repealed from May, 2014 till date. Besides, 76 Central Acts relating to State subject have also been repealed by the state legislature concerned. Congress fumes as BJP unveils portrait of Savarkar in Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi The winter session of the Karnataka legislature got off to a stormy start on December 19 with the ruling BJP unveiling the portrait of Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar, and six others, in the Assembly hall of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha (SVS) in Belagavi. KPCC president D. K. Shivakumar argued that there is no connection between Savarkar and Karnataka. He accused the BJP government of unveiling Savarkar’s portrait at this juncture to divert people’s attention from the problems plaguing the State, including corruption and maladministration. Later, the opposition Congress staged a protest at the entrance of SVS demanding portraits of several other personalities. Earlier, Speaker Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri unveiled the portraits of Savarkar, Vallabhbhai Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Basaveshwara, B.R. Ambedkar, Subhash Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda in the Assembly Hall, in the presence of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai. The opposition Congress skipped the portrait unveiling programme. Instead, they staged a protest at the entrance of the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha seeking portraits of various other prominent personalities. Led by Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah and KPCC president D. K. Shivakumar, the protesting Congress members sat on the steps of the entrance of SVS, holding pictures of Kanakadasa, Ambedkar, Valmiki and Kuvempu who, they claimed, had made significant contributions to India. Before staging the protest, Siddaramaiah wrote a letter to Kageri stating his demand. In the letter, Siddaramaiah said there is a need to keep alive the egalitarian ideals and principles of various iconic personalities by installing their portraits. He cited Basaveshwara, Narayana Guru, Maharshi Valmiki, Kanakadasa, Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Kuvempu, Vallabhbhai Patel and Babu Jagjivanram as among the numerous people who made an invaluable contribution to the Indian cultural heritage. BJP State general secretary Ravikumar said the BJP is ready to put up portraits of the personalities suggested by the Congress. In fact, the portraits of Basaveshwara, Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel were among those unveiled in the Assembly Hall, he said. Twitter poll: About 57.5% vote for Elon Musk to quit as CEO More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a poll that asked whether billionaire Elon Musk should step down as head of Twitter voted yes when the poll closed on Monday. There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Elon Musk, about whether that would happen, though he said that he would abide by the results. Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should stay in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites. In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.” But that decision generated so much criticism, including from past defenders of Twitter’s new owner, that Musk promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users. The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. Not only links but attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out “instagram dot com” could have led to a suspension, the company said. A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and soon after restored as Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented just hours earlier. Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s primary purpose is promotion of competitors.” Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week. Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership’s rules against hateful conduct and other harms. Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.” He used that to justify Twitter’s moves last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk. Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview. Musk’s promise to let users decide his future role at Twitter through an online survey appeared to come out of nowhere Sunday, though he had also promised in November that a reorganisation was happening soon. Musk was questioned in court on November 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company. Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer instead. Musk also said he expected an organisational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that. In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. Maharashtra leaders stopped at Karnataka border Karnataka police stopped a delegation from Maharashtra from crossing the border into Belagavi district on December 19. Officers put barricades across the road on the bridge over Doodha Ganga river in Kuganoli village on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. The group from Maharashtra comprising members of the BJP and Shiv Sena (ES) faction raised slogans against the Karnataka Government and Kannada organisations. Deputy Superintendent of Police Ramanagouda Hatti asked the group to go back as the district administration had promulgated prohibitory orders. The group relented after an hour. They were taken away by the Maharashtra police. Movement of vehicles was disrupted for over 90 minutes. In Brief: Thai military frigates and helicopters were on Monday searching for 31 sailors after a naval vessel sank, with dozens of others having been hauled from choppy waters. The HTMS Sukhothai capsized late on Sunday night as it was patrolling the Gulf of Thailand, about 37 kilometres (22 miles) off the nation’s southeastern coast. Some sailors survived by jumping into a life raft at night, according to images shared by the Royal Thai Navy, which said 75 people had been rescued. However, 31 sailors were still missing on Monday afternoon, according to navy spokesperson Admiral Pogkrong Montradpalin. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 19 DECEMBER 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! 1. Visit [The Hindu newsletters page]( 2. Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP 3. If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID Loans worth ₹10,09,511 crore written off in 5 years: FM Nirmala Sitharaman [Scheduled commercial banks have written off loans amounting to over ₹10.09 lakh crore]( in the last five financial years and the process of recovery of dues from the borrowers continues, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Lok Sabha on December 19. Sitharaman said recovery in NPA (non performing asset) accounts, including written-off loans, was an on-going process. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, public sector banks have recovered ₹4,80,111 crore, including ₹1,03,045 crore from written-off loans, during the last five financial years, she said. “As per inputs received from the RBI, scheduled commercial banks have written off an amount of ₹10,09,511 crore during the last five financial years,” Sitharaman said during Question Hour. 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, she added. Banks continue to pursue recovery actions initiated in written-off accounts through various recovery mechanisms available, Sitharaman added. The actions include filing of a suit in civil courts or in Debts Recovery Tribunals, action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002, filing of cases in the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, through negotiated settlement and compromise and sale of NPAs. “Therefore, write-off does not benefit the borrowers,” she said. The Minister said that according to RBI guidelines and policy approved by banks’ boards, NPAs, including those in respect of which full provisioning had been made on completion of four years, were removed from the balance sheet of the bank concerned by way of write-off. Banks evaluate and 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 RBI guidelines and policy approved by their boards, she said. Replying to a question, Sitharaman said the process of retrieving money of small depositors and investors from loan defaulters was very complicated as the legal process was lengthy and there were multiple claimants to the seized assets that included banks and other financial institutions. The Minister said she was aware of the depositors undergoing extreme difficulties and there was a need to look into the issue and how to simplify the process. Earlier, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad said names of loan defaulters were not disclosed due to RBI guidelines but their names could be disclosed once their assets were put up for auction. Bill to repeal over 60 old laws, rectify error in one introduced in LS [A bill which seeks to repeal over 60 obsolete laws]( including one enacted 137 years ago, was introduced in Lok Sabha on Monday. The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2022, also aims to correct a “patent error” in another law by replacing certain words. Piloted by Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, the bill is one of the periodical measures by which enactments which have ceased to be in force, or have become obsolete or their retention as separate Act is unnecessary, are repealed. Such bills also correct defects which are detected in laws. The bill proposes to repeal the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, 1885. It also seeks to repeal the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950. Under the law, “Whoever is found or is proved to have been in possession of any quantity of telegraph wires shall unless he proves that the telegraph wires came into his possession lawfully, be punishable, for the first offence, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine ...” The bill also seeks to repeal certain Appropriation Acts passed by Parliament in the recent past. Once the principal Act is amended, the amendment laws lose relevance. Their presence in the statute books as independent laws becomes unnecessary and they only clog the system. According to the third schedule of the bill, in section 31A, in sub-section (3), for the words “that Central Government”, the words “that Government” will be substituted in The Factoring Regulation Act, 2011. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha last week, Rijiju had noted that 1,486 obsolete and redundant Central Acts have been repealed from May, 2014 till date. Besides, 76 Central Acts relating to State subject have also been repealed by the state legislature concerned. Congress fumes as BJP unveils portrait of Savarkar in Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi [The winter session of the Karnataka legislature got off to a stormy start on December 19]( with the ruling BJP unveiling the portrait of Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar, and six others, in the Assembly hall of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha (SVS) in Belagavi. KPCC president D. K. Shivakumar argued that there is no connection between Savarkar and Karnataka. He accused the BJP government of unveiling Savarkar’s portrait at this juncture to divert people’s attention from the problems plaguing the State, including corruption and maladministration. [Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai with Karnataka Assembly Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri and others during the unveiling ceremony of portraits of Subhas Chandra Bose, BR Ambedkar, Basaveshwara, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on the first day of Winter Session of Karnataka Assembly, at Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi on December 19, 2022.] Later, the opposition Congress staged a protest at the entrance of SVS demanding portraits of several other personalities. Earlier, Speaker Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri unveiled the portraits of Savarkar, Vallabhbhai Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Basaveshwara, B.R. Ambedkar, Subhash Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda in the Assembly Hall, in the presence of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai. The opposition Congress skipped the portrait unveiling programme. Instead, they staged a protest at the entrance of the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha seeking portraits of various other prominent personalities. Led by Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah and KPCC president D. K. Shivakumar, the protesting Congress members sat on the steps of the entrance of SVS, holding pictures of Kanakadasa, Ambedkar, Valmiki and Kuvempu who, they claimed, had made significant contributions to India. Before staging the protest, Siddaramaiah wrote a letter to Kageri stating his demand. In the letter, Siddaramaiah said there is a need to keep alive the egalitarian ideals and principles of various iconic personalities by installing their portraits. He cited Basaveshwara, Narayana Guru, Maharshi Valmiki, Kanakadasa, Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Kuvempu, Vallabhbhai Patel and Babu Jagjivanram as among the numerous people who made an invaluable contribution to the Indian cultural heritage. BJP State general secretary Ravikumar said the BJP is ready to put up portraits of the personalities suggested by the Congress. In fact, the portraits of Basaveshwara, Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel were among those unveiled in the Assembly Hall, he said. Twitter poll: About 57.5% vote for Elon Musk to quit as CEO [More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a poll that asked whether billionaire Elon Musk]( should step down as head of Twitter voted yes when the poll closed on Monday. There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Elon Musk, about whether that would happen, though he said that he would abide by the results. Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should stay in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites. In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.” But that decision generated so much criticism, including from past defenders of Twitter’s new owner, that Musk promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users. The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. Not only links but attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out “instagram dot com” could have led to a suspension, the company said. A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and soon after restored as Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented just hours earlier. Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s primary purpose is promotion of competitors.” Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week. Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership’s rules against hateful conduct and other harms. Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.” He used that to justify Twitter’s moves last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk. Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview. Musk’s promise to let users decide his future role at Twitter through an online survey appeared to come out of nowhere Sunday, though he had also promised in November that a reorganisation was happening soon. Musk was questioned in court on November 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company. Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer instead. Musk also said he expected an organisational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that. In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. Maharashtra leaders stopped at Karnataka border [Karnataka police stopped a delegation from Maharashtra from crossing the border into Belagavi]( district on December 19. Officers put barricades across the road on the bridge over Doodha Ganga river in Kuganoli village on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. [Karnataka police stop Maharashtra leaders from entering Belagavi district on the Doodha Ganga river bridge in Kuganoli village on the KA MH border on December 19, 2022.] The group from Maharashtra comprising members of the BJP and Shiv Sena (ES) faction raised slogans against the Karnataka Government and Kannada organisations. Deputy Superintendent of Police Ramanagouda Hatti asked the group to go back as the district administration had promulgated prohibitory orders. The group relented after an hour. They were taken away by the Maharashtra police. Movement of vehicles was disrupted for over 90 minutes. In Brief: [Thai military frigates and helicopters were on Monday searching for 31 sailors]( after a naval vessel sank, with dozens of others having been hauled from choppy waters. The HTMS Sukhothai capsized late on Sunday night as it was patrolling the Gulf of Thailand, about 37 kilometres (22 miles) off the nation’s southeastern coast. Some sailors survived by jumping into a life raft at night, according to images shared by the Royal Thai Navy, which said 75 people had been rescued. However, 31 sailors were still missing on Monday afternoon, according to navy spokesperson Admiral Pogkrong Montradpalin. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.  Interested in Science? Our "Science For All" weekly newsletter takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! 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