In India, people will get loans from Public sector banks on the basis of their religion from now. The banking officials, who sanction loan for public, will have to take into account the receiver’s religious background.

The UPA government has mounted pressure on the Reserve Bank of India to include minorities in ‘weaker sections’. Further, there is a great pressure on the RBI to put minorities in the list to provide priority-sector lending by banks.

According to the RBI regulations, both public and private sector banks are obligated to lend 10% of the total loans to ‘weaker sections’. From now, the minorities would get place in the list of weaker section.

The banks would decide the minority-community receivers on the demographic basis of that state. With the RBI guideline, Sikhs in Punjab, Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir and Christians in Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland would not get such facilities from banks.

The RBI regulation puts scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, small farmers, artisans and urban in the list of weaker sections. Earlier, I had written a post here on January 17 that the government had issued a note regarding loan to minorities in the name of secular politics, it seems. However, in reality, this is nothing but a politics of vote bank on its extreme.

Further, the government had asked from the RBI and the Indian Banks Association (IBA) on allocating 6% of the total loans to the minorities. The banking division of ministry of finance, in a January 9 letter, had asked IBA to examine the proposal to set aside 15% of priority sector lending in all categories only for the people of minority communities.

According to the report, The RBI and the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) had replied to the government in a written statement that the lending practices should go with the borrower’s creditworthiness and not his caste or creed. But now, a senior banker has said that by introducing this measure banks would find better customers because the definition of weaker section has been widened.

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