New Delhi: Arguing for the "King of Good Times" turned "King of Debts" Vijay Mallya, his advocates attacked the banks for not going after other big defaulters including the politicians. It is true that Mallya is not the only one who owes thousands of crores to various banks in India. Several Members of Parliament and former Members of Parliament have also defaulted on big loans. Andhra Pradesh tops the list of big loan defaulters under this category.
Lagadapati Rajagopal or Lanco Rajagopal, who was a Congress Lok Sabha member from Visakhapatnam till 2014, is one of the biggest defaulters in India. His company owes over Rs 34,000 crore to various banks in the country. YS Chaudhury, Union minister of state for Science and Technology in the Modi government is another loan defaulter. Chaudhury, who is a TDP MP in the Rajya Sabha, is now facing a case of fraud in Mauritius. The Mauritius Commercial Bank has submitted that company owned by Chaudhury had stood as guarantor for the loan which has availed for Mauritius-based Hestia Holdings Ltd which is its subsidiary and the company has to repay Rs 106 crore to it.
The public sector Andhra Bank has already served a notice to TDP MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao for defaulting in payment of Rs 434 crore bank loan. In the notice, bank officials said that his properties would be auctioned if Rayapati fails to repay bank loan. Rayapati's Transstroy company has taken loans to the tune of Rs 1500 crore from various financial institutions. Now, the firm is not in a position to execute even the minor projects. Recently, the TDP government handed over Polavaram project construction works to some other firm in the place of Transstroy. Earlier he was a Congress MP.
Former Congress MP Venkatrami Reddy's "Deccan Chronicle" group is another big loan defaulter. Reddy who is currently in jail owes over Rs 4,000 crore to various banks.
The list is endless and some insiders from the banking sector claim that at least 100 current and former MPs owe money to various banks. Some owe as little as a few lakhs and some owe thousands of crores. According to a report in 'DNA' newspaper, it's not the poor farmers or the middle class who are defaulting on their loans. It's the country's super rich, businessmen and the upper middle class with loan amounts of over Rs 1 crore who account for a staggering 73% of the unpaid loans to banks. What is worse is that just the top 30 cases of default account for a Rs 1.21 lakh crore, which is almost 40% of the Non Performing Assets (NPAs) in banks. The upper middle class, who usually takes loans of over Rs 1 crore, accounts for 33% of the total NPAs.
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