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Has Govt Decided To Privatise All Public Sector Banks Except SBI? No, Viral Claim By Zee News Is Misleading!
India, 22 Aug 2022 10:45 AM GMT
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We found that the claim was based on a proposal by Arvind Panagariya, Former Deputy Chairman of NITI Aayog and Professor at Columbia University, and Poonam Gupta, Director General of NCAER. As per a reply by MoS Finance Bhagwat Karad, the government has not yet decided on which banks are to be privatised.
A claim regarding the privatisation of all nationalised Indian banks is going viral across social media. The claim is going viral in the context of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman remarking that public sector banks would be privatised as a part of the government's divestment drive.
In the Budget speech for the fiscal year 2021-22, FM Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to take up the privatisation of two public sector banks, leading to a series of debates. The government had initially planned to introduce a Banking Laws Amendment Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament, as per this Business Today article.
Claim:
Zee News published an article titled, 'Bank Privatization: Except SBI, all government banks will be private!' The news article mentions that the government will "soon" privatise two public sector banks, and media outlet stated that privatisation may start by September this year.
Netizens widely circulated the article by Zee News Hindi with the same Hindi text of the headline.
The claim is viral across Twitter and Facebook.
Fact Check:
The Logical Indian fact-check team verified the claim and found it to be misleading. The government has not yet decided on the banks that are to be privatised.
The Zee News Hindi article mentions that Arvind Panagariya, Former Deputy Chairman of NITI Aayog and Professor at Columbia University, and Poonam Gupta, Director General of NCAER, have advised the government to take up the privatisation of the banks.
However, this is not apparent in the headline of the article. We conducted a keyword search for these experts and found an article by The Times of India published on July 12, 2022.
The article mentions that the policy paper was written by Poonam Gupta and Arvind Panagariya, former NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman and Columbia University professor, to be presented at the India Policy Forum.
We then conducted a keyword search to determine which banks the government has selected for privatisation. We found this article in the Economic Times published on February 7, 2022. The article states that in Budget 2021-22, the government announced its intent to privatise two public sector banks (PSBs) during the year.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, the article quotes Minister of State for Finance, Bhagwat Karad, saying that the government has not yet decided on the banks that are to be privatised. "The amendments to the relevant Acts are required to be done before initiating the process of privatisation," Karad is quoted as saying. He also says that the government has been communicating with bank unions. These unions have expressed their views and concerns regarding the privatisation of banks.
We also found Karad's reply on the LokSabha website to a question answered on February 7, 2022. The reply states that as per the Department of Investment and Public Assets Management, the representations regarding strategic divestment of CPSEs and banks were received from various stakeholders.
These stakeholders include employee unions, which from time to time are duly examined as per the extant disinvestment policy of the Government. The reply also stated, "The amendments to the relevant Acts must be done before initiating the privatisation process."
We then conducted a keyword search for the paper to be presented by Gupta and Panagariya. In the paper's abstract, the authors note, "Due to its better performance and adhering to the development view of the PSBs, we propose that the State Bank of India (SBI) may remain under government ownership for now, but all other banks should be privatised."
In our Fact Check, we also found media outlets such as Indian Express, News18 and Business Standard reported it.
Conclusion:
We found that the claim was based on a proposal by Arvind Panagariya, Former Deputy Chairman of NITI Aayog and Professor at Columbia University, and Poonam Gupta, Director General of NCAER. Their policy paper on the proposal was presented at India Policy Forum.
As per a reply by MoS Finance Bhagwat Karad, the government has not yet decided on the banks that are to be privatised. The policy paper was reported on accurately by other media outlets such as Indian Express, and News 18, portraying it correctly as a suggestion to the government. Thus, we can conclude that Zee News circulated a misleading claim regarding the privatisation of PSBs.
If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.
Also Read: Pictures Showing Delhi Govt-Run School Are Not Of Private School As Claimed By BJP Leaders
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