On June 26th, the top officials from 11 public sector banks will appear before a parliamentary committee and make presentations before the panel on the problems of mounting bad loans and increasing fraud cases. 

The committee has been formed to look into the 'Banking Sector in India- Issues, Challenges and the Way Forward, including Non- Performing Assets/ Stressed Assets in Banks/Financial Institutions'. It will be headed by veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily.

On the other side, the list of banks asked to report to the committee includes IDBI Bank, UCO Bank, Central Bank of India, Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Dena Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Bank of Maharashtra, United Bank of India, Corporation Bank and Allahabad Bank.

In recent times, the number of bank frauds has been increasing rapidly. Frauds reported by banks grew from 4,693 in fiscal 2015-16 to 5,904 in 2017-18. Additionally, the fraud amount has also increased to Rs 32,361.27 crore at the end of March 2018, up from Rs 18,698.8 crore at the end of 2015-16. 

It was just a few days back that the Economic Offences Wing of the Pune police arrested Bank of Maharashtra CEO & MD  Ravindra Marathe, Executive Director Rajendra Gupta and two other bank officials for bad loans. They have allegedly been responsible for disbursing crores of rupees in loans to DSK Developers Limited without following proper procedure and in violation of RBI Guidelines. 

Adding on to this there are other famous cases like Chanda Kochar- ICICI Bank and PNB-Nirav Modi fraud case.

Cases like these have stimulated the higher authorities to look deeper into the system and review its current processes. Recently, RBI Governor Urjit Patel had attended to a host of questions asked by the committee members. He had replied and given his inputs on various issues like bad loans, bank frauds and cash crunch.  He also assured the panel members that steps were being taken to strengthen the banking system. 

Now as the committee gears up to meet and hear from the top Chiefs of some of the leading public sector banks, the steps being taken to strengthen the banking system could be brought to light.