| JK Bank on Governor's radar | | May seek details of NPAs, other loans | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 11: The Governor NN Vohra is understood to have taken a strong note of the reports that liquor baron Vijay Mallaya, who has gone bankrupt, owes crores to JK Bank, sources told Early Times on Friday.
They said the Governor is likely to seek details of the Non-performing-Assets (NPAs) of the J&K bank and order a probe which can lead to opening of Pandora's box.
They said the Governor is likely to call the JK Bank Chairman soon and direct him to clean up the process of sanctioning loans.
The Governor Vohra has sought complete details of the loans-primarily huge loans- given by the bank to different entities, how much has been recovered and why some of these loans have become NPAs.
The state government has majority of the shares in the bank and has been resisting attempts to turn JK bank into a nationalized bank. The central government has already initiated steps for the cleaning the NPAs and also the debt recovery.
The J&K government now being headed by the Governor has also been asked to take steps in this direction as its a major share holder in the bank.
The heat is on the banks over the NPAs after the case of the Vijay Mallaya, who owes Rs 9,000 crore to the banks came to fore.
"J&K bank has always been treated as private entity of a few individuals especially of the ruling parties who always wanted to control it. In the process the J&K bank has also developed vested interests," said a senior bureaucrat.
The divisional commissioner Kashmir Asgar Samoon has stirred the hornet's nest by claiming that J&K Bank distributed loans to 'blue-eyed boys' of politicians despite knowing that money would never come back.
He had also said that the J&K Bank lacked vision for investment and bank spends on corporate social responsibility 'to make politicians happy.' The gross NPAs of J&K bank have risen from around Rs 783 crore in 2014 to Rs 2,764 crore in 2015.
In same financial year, 2014-15, out of Rs 29.87 crore for CSR, only Rs 13.75 crore was spent. |
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