The sugar mills being chaired by VVIPs including former president Pratibha Patil, Congress MP Rajani Patil, former MPCC president Ranjeet Deshmukh and 21 other politicians from Congress, NCP and BJP, have defaulted on Mumbai Cooperative Bank loans worth crores of rupees. The actual amount of loan, which is due, is `116 crore while the interest on the principal amount reaches at `169 crore. Pravin Darekar, chairman of the Mumbai Cooperative Bank has demanded that CM Prithviraj Chavan intervene in the matter and at least pay the amount `87 crore, which was the amount decided by liability committee of the state government.
According to a senior official from the Mumbai Cooperative Bank, the bank had sanctioned a loan of hundreds of crores to sugar mills from 1985-86. As per the practice, the state government always gives a bank guarantee against the loan to the cooperative institutions.
The official said, “21 sugar mills have not paid of `116 crore as principal amount of the loan taken from Mumbai Coope-rative Bank..”
Mr Darekar, who is also an MLA from MNS said, “According to recommendations of Vaidyanathan Committee, the Mumbai Cooperative Bank should get `116 crores. Out of which `87 crore was finalised by state appointed committed liability committee.” He added that he recently met CM Prithviraj Chavan and requested him to intervene in this issue. An official of the bank said, “Seven defaulter sugar mills were auctioned by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, which is the apex body of the cooperative banks. The amount gained from the auction was distributed to the affected banks, out of which Mumbai Cooperative Bank got `32 crore. The auction of four sugar mills was once again in the pipeline. But state Cabinet in last month has taken a policy decision to not auction any sugar mills in the future. “This will affect the recovery of our loans,” said the official.
(for defaulters, see the list)