State-run Punjab National Bank on Friday said that based on its complaints passports of 150 wilful defaulters were impounded.

This the first such revelation by any bank after the government told banks to seek passport copy of all borrowers above Rs 50 crore. The bank embroiled in the Rs 14,000-crore scam involving jewellers Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and their companies, said that it is strengthening its recovery efforts with innovate recovery mechanisms and technology partnerships. “Due to PNB’s aggressive stance towards willful defaulters, 150 passports have been impounded over the past few months.

Over the last nine months, the bank has also lodged 37 FIRs against defaulters,” it said in a statement adding that in the past few weeks it has declared 1084 wilful defaulters. The bank said that its innovative recovery mechanism dubbed 'Mission Gandhigiri', which was launched in May 2017, has consistently delivered positive results.

Under the drive, a team from PNB visits the borrowers’ office or residence and sits there silently in an attempt to name and shame defaulters.

The bank aims to recover around Rs 100 crore per month through this route. PNB also claimed to leverage data analytics for loan recovery and risk management, and said that it has tied up with a leading credit agency. “This partnership is part of the larger strategy to deploy technology to strengthen internal systems,” it said while adding that PNB has been actively working towards improving internal systems by incorporating analytics and artificial intelligence for reconciliation of accounts. The bank has also set up special onetime settlement (OTS) schemes that have helped accelerate NPA recovery for the bank. “From an average of recovering loan amount from around 80,000 NPA accounts in a year, this move has resulted in recovery in 2.25 lakh NPA accounts over a span of 10 months,” it said adding that these schemes apply to small NPA accounts helping defaulters come out of debt.