New Delhi: The BJP led government Friday stated action has been taken against more than 6,000 officers of nationalized banks following last fiscal in cases of lapses that led to bad loans.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley  in a written reply instructed that minor and major penalties have been imposed against the erring officials. These include removal from office, compulsory retirement and downgrading.

"As per the inputs received from nationalised banks, in FY 2017-18, 6,049 officers have been held responsible on account of staff delinquency in NPA accounts...," Jaitley asserted.

FM also said that minor penalty/ major penalty have been slapped against erring officials and in all the cases, depending upon the amount concerned, CBI and police complaints have been registered.

Worth mention here the 19 nationalised banks, including PNB and Canara Bank, reported a net loss of Rs 21,388 crore in the first half of the fiscal. This leads to a combined loss Rs 6,861 crore in the similar period of 2017-18.

 On the other hand Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla stated  that no loan account of state-owned banks with outstanding of over Rs 25 crore has been declared as evergreen  since June 2014.

In another written reply to the lower House, Shukla asserted that as a result of transparent recognition of bad loans, the non-performing asset (NPA) amount of all commercial banks  climbed from Rs 5.66 lakh crore at end-March 2016 to Rs 9.62 lakh crore at end of March 2018.

Since then the amount has decreased to Rs 9.43 lakh crore.