Banks to launch a common platform for online auctioning of defaulters’ property

The government has advised banks to start a common platform for auctioning defaulters’ seized properties to attract competitive bids and increase recoveries from the sale of such assets.

Public sector banks, along with the Indian Banks’ Association, are steering the initiative to launch an e-auction website which will have standardized details of all auctionable properties of banks.

Banks display auction information on their own websites and it’s inconvenient for bidders to access information on multiple websites. This leads to a smaller pool of potential bidders, as well as involves costs for conducting repeated auctions.

It may take two to three months to get the platform ready for the online auctioning of the property. The common platform will enlarge the bidder base and will have visible auction information on all public sector banks’ websites.

The government is also working towards digitizing the debt recovery tribunals. Record of cases being handled in all 39 debt recovery tribunals and five debt recovery appellate tribunals are being computerized. A pilot run of the software has been done and adding the process of feeding in data in the new system will start from Oct. 1.