Mumbai, July 23 : The Shiv Sena (UBT) on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the Centre, accusing it of patronising big corporate loan defaulters while enforcing harsh recovery mechanisms on poor and middle-class citizens.

In an editorial in its mouthpiece, 'Saamana', the party said as per the official data provided by the Union Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha, public sector banks have written off bad loans totaling Rs 7.75 lakh crore across 1,249 accounts (each owing Rs 100 crore or more) between FY 2014-15 and FY 2025-26. Out of the massive defaults, banks have managed to recover a mere Rs 3.10 lakh crore so far.

While the government argued in Parliament that writing off loans is standard technical accounting for non-recoverable debts and does not equate to a total loan waiver, the editorial termed this defence shocking and hypocritical. "All of this is deeply shocking. Ever since coming to power, the Modi government has continuously beaten its chest about bringing financial discipline to the banking system. So, under what definition of 'financial discipline' does it fall to simply transfer unrecovered loans into bad debt accounts instead of enforcing recovery while big industrialists pull off such massive heists on banks?" asked the Thackeray camp.

"Taking massive loans, repaying a tiny fraction, and defaulting on the rest seems to have received official state sanction," the editorial noted, labelling the current era an "Amrit Kaal of Default". It further commented, "An 'Amrit Kaal of Loan Defaulting' has commenced in the country, where poor 'cockroaches' must tighten their belts to pay off their loan instalments, while wealthy billionaires get to bankrupt the banks. If the government itself is complicit, who is going to stop these robbers from looting public money?"

A major point of contention highlighted in the editorial is the governmentâ??s refusal to publicly disclose the names of these top corporate defaulters. The government cited Section 45E of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, which mandates confidentiality regarding credit information, as the reason for withholding the identities.

The editorial vehemently questioned this rationale. "Why are the names of small default borrowers publicly advertised in newspapers, while billionaire defaulters are shielded behind confidentiality clauses? Why are properties, vehicles, and homes of middle-class citizens, small business owners, and farmers seized or sealed over tiny defaults, while big corporate tycoons face no such action?"

The Thackeray camp questioned whether these defaulting tycoons are major donors to the ruling party, alleging an unspoken policy of "Give donations, get loan write-offs".

Sharply contrasting the plight of the common citizen with wealthy industrialists, the editorial claimed that while ordinary taxpayers squeeze their tight budgets to pay off micro-loans, wealthy billionaires are permitted to loot state banks with impunity.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena remarked that the open plunder of public sector banks is taking place through collusion between "fraudsters in industry and big fraudsters in government". It warned that if the state itself shields such elements, public money remains dangerously unsecured.

/IANS