Don’t have records of Mallya’s loans, says finance ministry
The finance ministry has told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it does not have information about the loans given to industrialist Vijay Mallya, prompting the transparency panel to remark that the response was “vague and not sustainable as per law”.
Chief information commissioner RK Mathur, while hearing the matter of one Rajiv Kumar Khare, told the ministry official that the Right to Information (RTI) application filed by the applicant should be transferred to the proper public authority.
The finance ministry official may have claimed that the ministry does not have information on loans sanctioned by different banks to Mallya or details of the guarantee given by him against those loans, but the ministry had responded to questions in this regard in Parliament in the past.
Union minister of state for finance Santosh Gangwar had responded to a question on Mallya on March 17, 2017, stating that the person, whose name was mentioned (Mallya), was given a loan in September, 2004 and that it was reviewed in February, 2008.
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The ₹8,040 crore loan was declared a non-performing asset (NPA) in 2009 and was was restructured in 2010, he had said.
“As reported by PSBs, an amount of ₹155 crore has been recovered by conducting a mega online auction by selling from the seized properties from defaulting loan borrower Vijay Mallya,” Gangwar had told the Rajya Sabha on March 21.
But as Khare failed to get a response from the ministry to his application, seeking details of Mallya’s loans, he approached the CIC. The term “information” under the RTI Act means any record held by or under the control of a public authority.
Khare was initially told that the information on loans could not be given because of the exemption clauses in the RTI Act.