Guidelines for Relief Measures by Banks in Areas Affected by Natural Calamities: RBI

GUIDELINES FOR RELIEF MEASURES BY BANKS IN AREAS
AFFECTED BY NATURAL CALAMITIES

Peri­od­i­cal but fre­quent occur­rences of nat­ur­al calami­ties take a heavy toll of human life and cause wide spread dam­age to eco­nom­ic pur­suits of human beings in one area or the oth­er of our coun­try. The dev­as­ta­tion caused by such nat­ur­al calami­ties calls for mas­sive reha­bil­i­ta­tion efforts by all agen­cies. The Cen­tral, State and local author­i­ties draw pro­grammes for eco­nom­ic reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the affect­ed peo­ple. The devel­op­men­tal role assigned to the com­mer­cial banks and co-oper­a­tive banks, war­rants their active sup­port in revival of the eco­nom­ic activities.

2. In terms of Nation­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Frame­work, there are two funds con­sti­tut­ed viz. Nation­al Dis­as­ter Response Fund and State Dis­as­ter Response Fund for pro­vid­ing relief in the affect­ed areas. This frame­work cur­rent­ly rec­og­nizes 12 types of nat­ur­al calami­ties viz. cyclone, drought, earth­quake, fire, flood, tsuna­mi, hail­storm, land­slide, avalanche, cloud burst, pest attack and cold wave/frost (added in August 2012). Of these 12 calami­ties, for 4 calami­ties i.e. drought, hail­storms, pest attack and cold wave/frost, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture is the nodal min­istry while for remain­ing 8 calami­ties Min­istry of Home Affairs is required to make appro­pri­ate arrange­ments. A slew of mea­sures for relief are under­tak­en by the Sov­er­eign (Central/State Gov­ern­ment) to pro­vide relief to the affect­ed per­sons which include, inter alia, pro­vi­sion for the input sub­si­dies and finan­cial assis­tance to mar­gin­al, small and oth­er farmers.

3. The banks’ con­tri­bu­tion in pro­vid­ing relief relates to resched­ul­ing of exist­ing loans and sanc­tion­ing of fresh loans as per the emerg­ing require­ments of the bor­row­ers. Banks need to have some Insti­tu­tion­al frame­work in place to deal with the sit­u­a­tion and they may also like to take some oth­er facil­i­tat­ing mea­sures like reducing/waiving their penal charges, etc. The pre­cise details in regard to the pro­vi­sion of cred­it assis­tance by the com­mer­cial banks will depend on the require­ments of the sit­u­a­tion, their own oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties and the actu­al needs of the borrowers.

4. Nev­er­the­less, to enable banks to take uni­form and con­cert­ed action expe­di­tious­ly, these guide­lines are issued cov­er­ing the above-men­tioned four aspects viz. Insti­tu­tion­al Frame­work (Para 5), Restruc­tur­ing of Exist­ing Loans (Para 6), Pro­vid­ing Fresh Loans (Para 7) and Oth­er Ancil­lary Relief Mea­sures (Para 8).

5. INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

Estab­lish­ing Policy/Procedures for deal­ing with Nat­ur­al Calamities

5.1 Since the area and time of occur­rence and inten­si­ty of nat­ur­al calami­ties can­not be antic­i­pat­ed, it is imper­a­tive that the banks have a blue­print of action in such even­tu­al­i­ties duly approved by the Board of Direc­tors so that the required relief and assis­tance is pro­vid­ed with utmost speed and with­out any loss of time. This pre-sup­pos­es that all the branch­es of com­mer­cial banks and their Region­al and Zon­al Offices will have a set of stand­ing instruc­tions spelling out the action that the branch­es will have to ini­ti­ate in the calami­ty affect­ed areas imme­di­ate­ly after the req­ui­site dec­la­ra­tion by the district/ state author­i­ties. It is nec­es­sary that these instruc­tions should also be avail­able with the State Gov­ern­ment author­i­ties and all the Dis­trict Col­lec­tors so that all con­cerned are clear about the action that would be tak­en by the banks’ branch­es in the affect­ed areas.

Dis­cre­tionary Pow­ers to Divi­sion­al / Zon­al Man­ag­er of banks

5.2 Divisional/ Zon­al Man­agers of com­mer­cial banks should be vest­ed with cer­tain dis­cre­tionary pow­ers so that they do not have to seek fresh approvals from their Cen­tral Offices to the line of action agreed to by the District/ State Lev­el Bankers’ Com­mit­tees. For exam­ple, such dis­cre­tionary pow­ers would be nec­es­sary in regard to adop­tion of scales of finance, exten­sion of loan peri­ods, sanc­tion of new loans keep­ing in view the total lia­bil­i­ty of the bor­row­er (i.e. aris­ing out of the old loan where the assets financed are dam­aged or lost on account of nat­ur­al calami­ty as well as the new loan for creation/repair of such assets), mar­gin, secu­ri­ty, etc.

Meet­ings of State Lev­el Bankers’ Committee/District Con­sul­ta­tive Committee

5.3 In the event of the calami­ty cov­er­ing entire State/ larg­er part of a State, the con­ven­er of the State Lev­el Bankers’ Com­mit­tee will con­vene a meet­ing imme­di­ate­ly after the occur­rence of nat­ur­al calami­ty to evolve a coor­di­nat­ed action plan for imple­men­ta­tion of the relief pro­gramme in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the State Gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. How­ev­er, in case the calami­ty has affect­ed only a small part of the State/few dis­tricts, the con­ven­ers of the Dis­trict Con­sul­ta­tive Com­mit­tees of the affect­ed dis­tricts should con­vene a meet­ing imme­di­ate­ly. In these spe­cial SLBC/DCC meet­ings, the posi­tion in the affect­ed areas should be assessed to ensure speedy for­mu­la­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of suit­able relief mea­sures by banks.

5.4 Wher­ev­er the calami­ty is very severe, the relief mea­sures ini­ti­at­ed and under­tak­en may be reviewed peri­od­i­cal­ly in the weekly/fortnightly meet­ings of spe­cial­ly con­sti­tut­ed Task Forces or sub Com­mit­tees of the SLBC till such time as con­di­tions are normalized.

Dec­la­ra­tion of Nat­ur­al Calamity

5.5 It is recog­nised that dec­la­ra­tion of nat­ur­al calami­ties is in the domain of the Sov­er­eign (Central/State Gov­ern­ments). The inputs received from the State Gov­ern­ments reveal that there are no uni­form pro­ce­dures being fol­lowed for dec­la­ra­tion of nat­ur­al calami­ty and issue of declarations/certificates. These declarations/certificates are called by dif­fer­ent names such as Annewari, Paise­wari, Gir­dawari, etc. in dif­fer­ent States. Nev­er­the­less, the com­mon thread to extend relief mea­sures is that the crop loss assessed should be 50% or more. For assess­ing this loss, while some States are con­duct­ing crop cut­ting exper­i­ments to deter­mine the loss in crop yield, some oth­ers are rely­ing on the eye estimates/visual impressions.

Dis­tinc­tion between Drought and Oth­er Calamities

5.6 So far as Drought is con­cerned, a cou­ple of States are fol­low­ing the advanced method­ol­o­gy based on the data of rain­fall, crop area sown, veg­e­ta­tion index, mois­ture ade­qua­cy index along with oth­er para­me­ters as sug­gest­ed in the ‘Man­u­al for Drought Man­age­ment’ released by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. In the cir­cum­stances, it is con­sid­ered appro­pri­ate to make dis­tinc­tion between (i) Drought (which is gen­er­al­ly a slow­ly evolv­ing calami­ty and can aggra­vate or reverse as per the rain­fall dur­ing the peri­od; and (ii) Oth­er Calami­ties which are phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from Drought and are of a sud­den nature;

Drought : As the ‘Man­u­al for Drought Man­age­ment’ com­mends cer­tain guide­lines for the State Gov­ern­ments (while mak­ing it clear that these guide­lines are not manda­to­ry) on the adop­tion of sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy and var­i­ous parameters/indexes, as men­tioned above, to assess the sit­u­a­tion, the State Gov­ern­ments may either:

1. adopt the pro­ce­dures indi­cat­ed in the Man­u­al for Drought Man­age­ment and based on the var­i­ous parameters/indexes indi­cat­ed there­in, decide on the dec­la­ra­tion of drought. Such dec­la­ra­tions should elab­o­rate­ly indi­cate the data/procedures which have been relied upon/followed by the State gov­ern­ment and the extent of assessed crop loss.
2. con­duct Crop Cut­ting Exper­i­ments as pre­scribed in the Nation­al Agri­cul­ture Insur­ance Pro­gramme, which is one of the pre-con­di­tions for declar­ing the crops eli­gi­ble for insur­ance, and declare the ‘Annewari’ (by what­ev­er name called) indi­cat­ing the crop-wise per­cent­age loss in the cer­tifi­cates issued. In any case, State Gov­ern­ments need to sub­mit detailed taluka/block/district wise crop loss data to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment if they seek any funds for relief work.

Oth­er Calami­ties : The loss should be assessed through crop cut­ting exper­i­ments clear­ly indi­cat­ing that the crop loss in the par­tic­u­lar area/taluka/mandal/block (as the case may be) has been 50% or more to trig­ger resched­ule­ment of loans from banks. In case of extreme sit­u­a­tions such as wide-spread floods, etc. when it is large­ly clear that most of the stand­ing crops have been dam­aged and/or land and oth­er assets have suf­fered a wide-spread dam­age, the mat­ter be delib­er­at­ed by State Government/District Author­i­ties in the espe­cial­ly con­vened SLBC/DCC meet­ings where the con­cerned Gov­ern­ment functionary/District Col­lec­tor may explain the rea­sons for not esti­mat­ing ‘Annewari’ (per­cent­age of crop loss – by what­ev­er name called) through crop cut­ting exper­i­ments and that the deci­sion to pro­vide relief for the affect­ed pop­u­lace needs to be tak­en based on the eye estimate/visual impressions.

In both the cas­es, how­ev­er, DCCs/SLBC have to sat­is­fy them­selves ful­ly that the crop loss has been 50% or more before act­ing on these pronouncements.

6. Restructuring/Rescheduling of Exist­ing Loans

6.1 As the repay­ing capac­i­ty of the peo­ple affect­ed by nat­ur­al calami­ties gets severe­ly impaired due to the dam­age to the eco­nom­ic pur­suits and loss of eco­nom­ic assets, relief in repay­ment of loans becomes nec­es­sary in areas affect­ed by nat­ur­al calami­ty and hence, restruc­tur­ing of the exist­ing loans will be required.

Agri­cul­ture Loans

Short-term Pro­duc­tion Cred­it (Crop Loans)

6.2 All short-term loans, except those which are over­due at the time of occur­rence of nat­ur­al calami­ty, should be eli­gi­ble for restruc­tur­ing. The prin­ci­pal amount of the short-term loan as well as inter­est due for repay­ment in the year of occur­rence of nat­ur­al calami­ty may be con­vert­ed into term loan.

6.3 The repay­ment peri­od of restruc­tured loans may vary depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of calami­ty and its recur­rence, the extent of loss of eco­nom­ic assets and dis­tress caused. Gen­er­al­ly, the restruc­tured peri­od for repay­ment may be 3 to 5 years. How­ev­er, where the dam­age aris­ing out of the calami­ty is very severe, banks may, at their dis­cre­tion, extend the peri­od of repay­ment rang­ing up to 7 years and in extreme cas­es of hard­ship, the repay­ment peri­od may be pro­longed up to a max­i­mum peri­od of 10 years in con­sul­ta­tion with the Task Force/ SLBC.

6.4 In all cas­es of restruc­tur­ing, mora­to­ri­um peri­od of at least one year should be con­sid­ered. Fur­ther, the banks should not insist for addi­tion­al col­lat­er­al secu­ri­ty for such restruc­tured loans.

Agri­cul­ture Loans — Long term (Invest­ment) Credit

6.5 The exist­ing term loan install­ments will have to be resched­uled keep­ing in view the repay­ing capac­i­ty of the bor­row­ers and the nature of nat­ur­al calami­ty viz.,

a) Nat­ur­al Calami­ties where only crop for that year is dam­aged and pro­duc­tive assets are not damaged.

b) Nat­ur­al Calami­ties where the pro­duc­tive assets are par­tial­ly or total­ly dam­aged and bor­row­ers are in need of a new loan.

6.6 In regard to nat­ur­al calami­ty under cat­e­go­ry (a) above, the banks may reschdeule the pay­ment of install­ment dur­ing the year of nat­ur­al calami­ty and extend the loan peri­od by one year. Under this arrange­ment the install­ments default­ed wil­ful­ly in ear­li­er years will not be eli­gi­ble for resched­ul­ing. The banks may also have to post­pone pay­ment of inter­est by borrowers.

6.7 In regard to cat­e­go­ry (b) i.e. where the borrower’s assets are partially/totally dam­aged, the resched­ul­ing by way of exten­sion of loan peri­od may be deter­mined on the basis of over­all repay­ing capac­i­ty of the bor­row­er vis-a-vis his total lia­bil­i­ty (old term loan, restruc­tured crop loan, if any and the fresh crop/term loan being giv­en) less the sub­si­dies received from the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, com­pen­sa­tion avail­able under the insur­ance schemes, etc. While the total repay­ment peri­od for the restructured/fresh term loan will dif­fer on case-to-case basis, gen­er­al­ly it should not exceed a peri­od of 10 years.

Oth­er Loans

6.8 A view needs to be tak­en by SLBC/DCC depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the calami­ty as to whether a gen­er­al resched­ule­ment of all oth­er loans (i.e. besides the agri­cul­ture loans as indi­cat­ed above) such as loans grant­ed for allied activ­i­ties and loans giv­en to rur­al arti­sans, traders, micro/small indus­tri­al units or in case of extreme sit­u­a­tions, medi­um enter­pris­es is required. If such a deci­sion is tak­en, while recov­ery of all the loans be post­poned by the spec­i­fied peri­od, banks will have to assess the require­ment of the indi­vid­ual bor­row­ers in each such case and depend­ing on the nature of his account, repay­ment capac­i­ty and the need for the fresh loans, appro­pri­ate deci­sions may be tak­en by the indi­vid­ual banks.

6.9 The pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion before the banks in extend­ing cred­it to any unit for its reha­bil­i­ta­tion should be the via­bil­i­ty of the ven­ture after the reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme is implemented.

Asset Clas­si­fi­ca­tion

6.10 The asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion sta­tus of these loans will be as under:

a) The restruc­tured por­tion of the short term as well as long-term loans may be treat­ed as cur­rent dues and need not be clas­si­fied as NPA. The asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion of these fresh term loans would there­after be gov­erned by the revised terms and con­di­tions. Nev­er­the­less, banks are required to make high­er pro­vi­sions for such restruc­tured stan­dard advances as pre­scribed by Depart­ment of Bank­ing Reg­u­la­tion from time to time.

b) The asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the remain­ing amount due, which have not been restruc­tured, will con­tin­ue to be gov­erned by the orig­i­nal terms and con­di­tions. Con­se­quent­ly, the dues from the bor­row­er may be clas­si­fied by the lend­ing bank under dif­fer­ent asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion cat­e­gories viz. stan­dard, sub-stan­dard, doubt­ful and loss.

c) Addi­tion­al finance, if any, may be treat­ed as “stan­dard asset” and its future asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion will be gov­erned by the terms and con­di­tions of its sanction.

6.11 With the objec­tive to ensure that banks are suf­fi­cient­ly proac­tive in extend­ing the relief to the affect­ed per­sons, the ben­e­fit of asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the restruc­tured accounts as on the date of nat­ur­al calami­ty will be avail­able only if the restruc­tur­ing is com­plet­ed with­in a peri­od of three months from the date of nat­ur­al calami­ty. In the event of extreme calami­ty, when the SLBC/DCC is of the view that this peri­od will not be suf­fi­cient for the bank­ing sec­tor to resched­ule all the loans, they should imme­di­ate­ly approach RBI (con­cerned Region­al Office) giv­ing the rea­sons for seek­ing exten­sion. These requests will be con­sid­ered on the basis of mer­it of each case.

6.12 The accounts that are restruc­tured for the sec­ond time or more on account of nat­ur­al calami­ties would retain the same asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion cat­e­go­ry on restruc­tur­ing. Accord­ing­ly, for once restruc­tured stan­dard asset, the sub­se­quent restruc­tur­ing neces­si­tat­ed on account of nat­ur­al calami­ty would not be treat­ed as sec­ond restruc­tur­ing, i.e., the stan­dard asset clas­si­fi­ca­tion will be allowed to be main­tained. All oth­er restruc­tur­ing norms, how­ev­er, will apply.

Util­i­sa­tion of Insur­ance Proceeds

6.13 While the above mea­sures relat­ing to resched­ul­ing of loans are intend­ed to pro­vide relief to the farm­ers, the insur­ance pro­ceeds should, ide­al­ly, com­pen­sate their loss­es. In terms of orders issued by Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Coop­er­a­tion, Nation­al Crop Insur­ance Pro­gramme (NCIP) has been imple­ment­ed across the Coun­try from Rabi 2013. The loa­nee farm­ers are com­pul­so­ri­ly cov­ered under the NCIP-com­po­nent Scheme as noti­fied by the State Gov­ern­ments. While restruc­tur­ing the loans in the areas affect­ed by nat­ur­al calami­ties, banks should also take into account the insur­ance pro­ceeds, if any, receiv­able from the Insur­ance Com­pa­ny. They should adjust these pro­ceeds to ‘restruc­tured accounts’. How­ev­er, it should be done in cas­es where they have grant­ed fresh loans to the bor­row­ers.

7. Sanc­tion­ing of Fresh Loans

7.1 Once the deci­sions on the resched­ul­ing of loans is tak­en by SLBC/DCC, pend­ing such con­ver­sion of short-term loans, banks may grant fresh crop loans to the affect­ed farm­ers which will be based on the scale of finance for the par­tic­u­lar crop and the cul­ti­va­tion area, as per the extant guidelines.

7.2 The bank assis­tance in rela­tion to agri­cul­ture and allied activ­i­ties (poul­try, fish­ery, ani­mal hus­bandry, etc.) would also be need­ed for long term loans for a vari­ety of pur­pos­es such as repair of exist­ing eco­nom­ic assets or acqui­si­tion of new assets. Sim­i­lar­ly, rur­al arti­sans, self-employed per­sons, micro and small indus­tri­al units, etc. in the areas affect­ed by nat­ur­al calami­ties may require the cred­it to sus­tain their liveli­hood. Banks may, of their own, assess and decide on the quan­tum of fresh loans to be grant­ed to the affect­ed bor­row­ers tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion, amongst oth­ers, their cred­it require­ments and the due pro­ce­dure fol­lowed for sanc­tion­ing of loans.

7.3 Banks may also grant con­sump­tion loans up to Rs. 10,000/- to exist­ing bor­row­ers with­out any col­lat­er­al. The lim­it may, how­ev­er, be enhanced beyond Rs. 10,000/- at the dis­cre­tion of the bank.

Terms and Conditions

Guar­an­tee, Secu­ri­ty and Margin

7.4 Cred­it should not be denied for want of per­son­al guar­an­tees. Where the bank’s exist­ing secu­ri­ty has been erod­ed because of dam­age or destruc­tion by floods, assis­tance will not be denied mere­ly for want of addi­tion­al fresh secu­ri­ty. The fresh loan may be grant­ed even if the val­ue of secu­ri­ty (exist­ing as well as the asset to be acquired from the new loan) is less than the loan amount. For fresh loans, a sym­pa­thet­ic view will have to be taken.

7.5 Where the crop loan (which has been con­vert­ed into term loan) was ear­li­er giv­en against per­son­al security/ hypoth­e­ca­tion of crop and the bor­row­er is not able to offer charge/mortgage of land as secu­ri­ty for the con­vert­ed loan, he should not be denied con­ver­sion facil­i­ty mere­ly on the ground of his inabil­i­ty to fur­nish land as secu­ri­ty. If the bor­row­er has already tak­en a term loan against mortgage/charge on land, the bank should be con­tent with a sec­ond charge for the con­vert­ed term loan. Banks should not insist on third par­ty guar­an­tees for pro­vid­ing con­ver­sion facilities.

7.6 Where land is tak­en as secu­ri­ty, in the absence of orig­i­nal title records, a cer­tifi­cate issued by the Rev­enue Depart­ment offi­cials may be accept­ed for financ­ing farm­ers who have lost proof of their titles i.e. in the form of deeds, as also the reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cates issued to reg­is­tered share-croppers.

7.7 Mar­gin require­ments may be waived or the grants/ sub­sidy giv­en by the con­cerned State Gov­ern­ment may be con­sid­ered as margin.

Rate of Interest

7.8 The rates of inter­est will be in accor­dance with the direc­tives of the Reserve Bank. With­in the areas of their dis­cre­tion, how­ev­er, banks are expect­ed to take a sym­pa­thet­ic view of the dif­fi­cul­ties of the bor­row­ers and extend a con­ces­sion­al treat­ment to calami­ty-affect­ed peo­ple. In respect of cur­rent dues in default, no penal inter­est will be charged. The banks should also suit­ably defer the com­pound­ing of inter­est charges. Banks may not levy any penal inter­est and con­sid­er waiv­ing penal inter­est, if any, already charged in regard to the loans converted/rescheduled. Depend­ing on the nature and sever­i­ty of nat­ur­al calami­ty, the SLBC/ DCC shall take a view on the inter­est rate con­ces­sion that could be extend­ed to bor­row­ers so that there is uni­for­mi­ty in approach among banks in pro­vid­ing relief.

8. Oth­er Ancil­lary Relief Measures

Besides resched­ul­ing of exist­ing loans and pro­vid­ing fresh loans to the affect­ed per­sons, banks may also fol­low the fol­low­ing guidelines

Know Your Cus­tomer Norms — Relaxations

8.1 It needs to be rec­og­nized that many per­sons dis­placed or adverse­ly affect­ed by a major calami­ty may not have access to their nor­mal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and per­son­al records. In such cas­es, where the affect­ed per­sons are not able to pro­vide stan­dard iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments, as per­mit­ted under the reg­u­la­tion and as a con­se­quence, it is not pos­si­ble for bank branch­es to fol­low the KYC guide­lines as pre­scribed, they may resort to non-doc­u­men­tary ver­i­fi­ca­tion meth­ods. They can open a small account based on the pho­to­graph and sig­na­ture or thumb impres­sion in front of the bank offi­cial. The above instruc­tions will be applic­a­ble to cas­es where the bal­ance in the account does not exceed Rs. 50,000/- or the amount of relief grant­ed (if high­er ) and the total cred­it in the account does not exceed Rs. 1,00,000/- or the amount of relief grant­ed, (if high­er) in a year.

Pro­vid­ing access to Bank Accounts

8.2 In areas where the bank branch­es are affect­ed by nat­ur­al calami­ty and are unable to func­tion nor­mal­ly, banks may oper­ate from tem­po­rary premis­es, under advice to RBI. For con­tin­u­ing the tem­po­rary premis­es beyond 30 days, spe­cif­ic approval may be obtained from the con­cerned region­al office(RO) of RBI. Banks may also ensure ren­der­ing of bank­ing ser­vices to the affect­ed areas by set­ting up satel­lite offices, exten­sion coun­ters or mobile bank­ing facil­i­ties under inti­ma­tion to RBI.

8.3 To sat­is­fy customer’s imme­di­ate cash require­ments, restora­tion of the func­tion­ing of ATMs at the ear­li­est or mak­ing alter­nate arrange­ments for pro­vid­ing such facil­i­ties may be giv­en due impor­tance. Banks may con­sid­er putting in place arrange­ments for allow­ing their cus­tomers to access oth­er ATM net­works, Mobile ATMs, etc.

8.4 Oth­er mea­sures that banks may take, at their dis­cre­tion, to alle­vi­ate the con­di­tion of affect­ed per­sons could be waiv­ing ATM fees, increas­ing ATM with­draw­al lim­its; waiv­ing over­draft fees; waiv­ing ear­ly with­draw­al penal­ties on time deposits; waiv­ing late fee for cred­it card/other loan install­ment pay­ments and giv­ing option to cred­it card hold­ers to con­vert their out­stand­ing bal­ance to EMIs repayable in 1 or 2 years. Besides, all charges deb­it­ed to the farm loan account oth­er than the nor­mal inter­est may be waived con­sid­er­ing the hard­ship caused to farmers.

9. Applic­a­bil­i­ty of the guide­lines in the case of riots and disturbances

9.1 When­ev­er RBI advis­es the banks to extend reha­bil­i­ta­tion assis­tance to the riot/ dis­tur­bance affect­ed per­sons, the afore­said guide­lines may broad­ly be fol­lowed by banks for the pur­pose. It should, how­ev­er, be ensured that only gen­uine per­sons, duly iden­ti­fied by the State Admin­is­tra­tion as hav­ing been affect­ed by the riots/ dis­tur­bances, are pro­vid­ed assis­tance as per the guidelines.

9.2 The issuance of advice to the banks by Reserve Bank of India on receipt of request/ infor­ma­tion from State Gov­ern­ment and there­after issue of instruc­tions by banks to their branch­es gen­er­al­ly results in delay in extend­ing the assis­tance to riot-affect­ed peo­ple. With a view to ensur­ing quick relief to the affect­ed per­sons, it has been decid­ed that the Dis­trict Col­lec­tor, on occur­rence of the riots/ dis­tur­bances, may ask the Lead Bank Offi­cer to con­vene a meet­ing of the DCC, if nec­es­sary and sub­mit a report to the DCC on the extent of dam­age caused to life and prop­er­ty in the area affect­ed by riots/disturbances. If the DCC is sat­is­fied that there has been exten­sive loss to life and prop­er­ty on account of the riots/ dis­tur­bances, the relief as per the above guide­lines may be extend­ed to the peo­ple affect­ed by the riots/ dis­tur­bances. In cer­tain cas­es, where there are no Dis­trict Con­sul­ta­tive Com­mit­tees, the Dis­trict Col­lec­tor may request the con­ven­er of the State Lev­el Bankers’ Com­mit­tee of the State to con­vene a meet­ing of the bankers to con­sid­er exten­sion of relief to the affect­ed per­sons. The report sub­mit­ted by the Col­lec­tor and the deci­sion there­on of DCC/ SLBC may be record­ed and should form a part of the min­utes of the meet­ing. A copy of the pro­ceed­ings of the meet­ing may be for­ward­ed to the con­cerned Region­al Office of the Reserve Bank of India.