New Delhi: In what is likely to be a stern grilling, RBI Governor Urjit Patel is being questioned by the Parliamentary Committee on Finance today. The questions raised by Veerapa Moily lead committee are about growing NPA problem of banks, high-profile bank fraud cases and a clarity on the value of money that has returned to banks after demonetization.According to news agencies, Urjit Patel expressed confidence that RBI would be able to resolve the bad loan crisis currently plaguing the Indian banking system.
At the last meeting on July 16, 2017, Patel had told the panel that RBI has ordered for new counting machines as the existing machines or the manpower were not sufficient to complete counting. The new counting machines, for which RBI had called for tenders, were to be big units measuring 10 feet by 10 feet and expected to have the capacity to count crores of notes in split seconds, eject fake notes and help in shredding once the numbers are tallied. “We will get a feedback from the governor on all these developments,” said a committee member.
According to news agencies, the decision to summon Patel was taken during a Committee meeting held in April, which was attended by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Moily, among others A number of banking scams have surfaced in the recent past involving state and private lenders such as Punjab National Bank (PNB), ICICI Bank, and so on. Urjit Patel has faced flak from the oppositon for his handling of operations during the demonetization period and also the inability of RBI to crack down on white collar crimes such as the Nirav Modi’s PNB scam.