'Brutally unfair' that system can't protect common man's savings, says HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh
Mumbai, Oct 11: Amid the crisis at Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC), HDFC chairman said it is "brutally unfair" we have regular loan waivers and corporate loan write-offs but no financial system to protect the common man's savings.
The scam at PMC Bank has affected thousands of its depositors as their money is stuck with the urban cooperative bank's after RBI had put a withdrawal limits at Rs 25,000 per accounts last month.
The restrictions from the RBI came in after it found the bank's exposure to real estate developer HDIL was in too much in excess of what the regulations require and also as the lender hid the NPAs of HDIL.
PMC's exposure to HDIL is around Rs 6,500 crore, which is 73 percent of its loan book of Rs 8,880 crore, as per bank's own admission.
"To my mind, there is no greater cardinal sin in finance than misuse of the common man's hard earned savings.
"It seems brutally unfair that we have allowed a system of loan waivers and write-offs every now and again, but yet we do not have a robust enough financial system to protect the honest common man's savings," Parekh said without mentioning any particular incident while launching a centre for financial studies by B-school SP Jain.
He said trust and confidence are the backbone of any financial system and one should never underestimate the power of ethics and values.
"It is a pity that this is so often eroded," he said, but was quick to add this problem crops up across the world.
Calling for encouraging savings if credit were to grow, Parekh said the savings rate at 30 percent of GDP has been showing a declining trend over the past decade.
"Household savings is important for any economy and that is why there is likely to be a threshold beyond which lowering interest rates becomes difficult," he said.
Our savers prefer assured returns which is why fixed deposits continue to remain the preferred choice of savings, he added.
He said the crux of the problem with the financial sector is that the flow of credit to the commercial sector is still clogged.
Talking about economy, he said given the global slowdown, our growth rate is still better. "Yes, we are facing short-term challenges, particularly on consumption growth, but these appear to be cyclical and not a deep-rooted malaise."
Parekh said there is no other major economy that currently has the capacity to absorb the scale of investments that India needs or has the growth potential that we have.
"Market cycles are inevitable. But as long as we are able to self-correct, work towards financial sector reforms, bring in enabling policies, encourage true and fair entrepreneurship and have a stable rule of law, I think there is no reason to believe why India won't retain its rightful place on the global stage," he said.
Addressing the event, former chairman of SBI Arundhati Bhattacharya said if the country wants to be a USD 5 trillion economy, then the financial system should be strong enough.
Supporting the merger of public sector banks announced recently, she said the though it is painful the government has done the right things of merging the struggling state-run banks.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
NEET-UG: 2 more held, role of several NTA officers under scanner; CBI focussing on source of leak
New Delhi (PTI): The CBI has arrested two more persons in connection with the NEET (UG) paper-leak case, with the role of several officers of the National Testing Agency (NTA) and other organisations, who had access to the printing press where the papers were printed, coming under the scanner, officials said on Thursday.
The agency has arrested Dhananjay Lokhanda from Ahilyanagar and Manisha Waghmare from Pune and conducted searches at 14 locations across the country in the last 24 hours, they said.
The CBI is focussing on identifying the source of the leak that has caused massive disappointment to lakhs of aspirants eyeing a seat in undergraduate medical courses, which are allotted after the highly-competitive examination, the officials said.
According to the CBI probe so far, the involvement of public servants in the leak cannot be ruled out.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested three individuals from Jaipur -- Mangilal Biwal, Vikas Biwal and Dinesh Biwal -- along with Yash Yadav from Gurugram and Shubham Khairnar from Nashik.
Khairnar was in touch with Yadav and informed him in April that Mangilal Biwal was ready to pay Rs 10-12 lakh for arranging leaked NEET (UG) 2026 questions for his younger son.
Khairnar allegedly provided 500 to 600 questions from the leaked paper to Yadav, the officials said, adding that the questions could have helped score enough marks to get a seat in a reputed medical college.
Mangilal Biwal allegedly procured the paper from Yadav, who was known to his elder son Vikas Biwal from an NEET coaching in Rajasthan's Sikar. The deal between Mangilal Biwal and Yadav was for Rs 10 lakh, if 150 questions from the question bank matched with those in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) paper, the officials said.
Mangilal Biwal shared the paper with his son and further distributed it among relatives.
Yadav also told Vikas Biwal to find additional candidates for the questions to recover some of the money that he had spent on getting those, the officials said.
An analysis of digital devices has given the agency incriminating chats, leaked question papers and other digital evidence. The CBI will subject the devices to a forensic examination to get the deleted data, the officials said.
The federal agency has registered an FIR and formed teams to probe the alleged NEET (UG) paper leak that resulted in the cancellation of the exam held on May 3.
The NEET (UG) 2026 was conducted across 551 Indian cities and at 14 overseas centres. Nearly 23 lakh candidates had registered for the test, which was administered by the NTA at centres across the country.
According to the NTA, information regarding alleged malpractice was received on the evening of May 7, four days after the examination was held. The NTA said the inputs were escalated to central agencies the following morning for "independent verification and necessary action".
The Rajasthan Police's Special Operations Group (SOG) has claimed that a "guess paper" for chemistry, allegedly circulated among students ahead of the examination, had approximately 410 questions, including roughly 120 that appeared in the test.
