The Narendra Modi government's efforts to force tax evaders to come clean with their ill-gotten wealth seems to be paying off. In a statement on Friday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's deputy Santosh Kumar Gangwar said undisclosed income of more than 2,500 individuals over the past three financial years (up to January 2017 for FY2017) stood at Rs 45,622 crore, in addition to seizure of undisclosed cash, jewellery worth Rs 3,625 crore.
A combination of legislative measures and data mining led to the result, the minister said in reply to a question raised in the Lok Sabha.
During the period, 116 persons were convicted for various offences under the Income Tax Act.
Unclaimed deposits rise
Money lying in unclaimed bank accounts amounted to Rs 6,835 crore as of March 31, 2015, up from Rs 4,998 crore in the previous fiscal.
Non-food credit growth slows down
In another reply, Gangwar said non-food credit growth rate as of March 3, 2017 dropped to 4.8 percent as against 11.1 percent in the corresponding period last year, citing RBI data.
Spike in bad loans of state-run banks
The minister said gross non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, of public sector banks rose to 1.23 percent of total advances as of December 31, 2016 from 9.83 percent as of March 31, 2016.
A day ago, Jaitley had said a new policy on recovering NPAs would be put in place by the government. "The government and the RBI have taken a policy decision on dealing with NPAs...we will announce the decision in a few days," he said at an event in New Delhi on Thursday.
In absolute terms, gross NPAs of state-run banks stood at Rs 6,30,323 crore as of September 30, 2016 out of total advances worth Rs 57,01,862 crore, the government had said in December last year.
