Facing questions, the Government on Wednesday insisted in the Rajya Sabha that State Bank of India had not waived ₹7,000-crore loan, including advances to industrialist Vijay Mallya, and asserted that the cases were being pursued.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley referred to the Mallya loan issue as a “terrible legacy” which the NDA government had inherited from the UPA.

He gave the clarification after CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury alleged during a discussion on demonetisation that the government was favouring “crocodiles” while “small fishes” were dying.

In this context, he alleged that SBI had written off ₹7,000-crore NPAs. He named Mallya as one of those whose loans had been written off.

“SBI has waived ₹7,000 crore from its non-performing assets, of loans which are not being returned,” Yechury said.

He said a performing asset is where interest has been serviced and non-performing where interest is not serviced but one will still preserve it. Intervening, Jaitley said, “Written off does not mean waiver.... It does not mean that the loan ceases to be a loan. We will still chase the loan, the entry in the book changes, that is from being performing assets, it becomes non-performing.”

The Finance Minister told the Opposition, “there is a little bit of malapropism involved in this. Don’t go by literal meaning write-off, it does not. Write-off does not mean loan waiver. Loan still remains.”

Jaitley further clarified that the loan (to Mallya) was sanctioned when the present government was not in power, an apparent reference to the previous UPA rule. “Again this was restructured when another government was in power. This is the only loan for which second restructure was wanted by that government. So we inherited a terrible legacy,” he said.

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