UPA phone-banking scam broke banking system: PM Modi | India News

NEW DELHI: Distributing more than 70,000 appointment letters to new recruits in government jobs across the country on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit out at the earlier Congress-led UPA government saying while now people avail banking service using mobile phones, earlier “phone banking” was the biggest scam as people in power would make calls to banks to provide loans to only a few.

Alleging that the “phone banking scam” was one of the biggest scams of the previous government, which broke the backbone of the banking system, Modi said while earlier several banks were incurring losses and their loans were becoming non-performing assets (NPAs), now the same institutions are making record profits.
Addressing a gathering of recruits at the ‘Rozgar Mela’ , Modi noted that a large number of them have been employed in the banking sector as he highlighted that today India is one of the countries where the banking sector is considered to be the strongest.

He said that this was not the case earlier as the greed for power overrode national interest. In this digital age, people avail banking services through mobile phones, use phone-banking, but the idea, methods and intentions of phone banking was different during the earlier dispensation.
He said then some powerful leaders, close to a particular family, called the banks and a few used to get loans worth thousands of crores. Those loans were never repaid. He said even for repayment of one loan the people in power would call the banks to sanction another loan and to repay the second loan there would be a third loan.
PM Narendra Modi also spoke about several steps taken by the government, including merger of small banks and bringing a law to protect people’s investment of up to Rs 5 lakh in banks, which earlier was Rs 1 lakh.