On the one hand these banks are aggressively pursuing the common man for availing of credit facilities and that too at exorbitant rates ranging between 28 per cent to 50 per cent per annum under the guise of unsecured loan and on the other hand are restoring to terror tactics in recovering the amounts even when the default is due to genuine reasons.

The logic these banks give for such a high rate of interest is that the default rate is very high. “The loan taker is actually already paying for people who are defaulting. If one were to make queries about the default rate, it has been pegged at 7-8 per cent of the total lending basket and no logic can translate into such high rate of interest, he said.

CCAI is now set to create awareness among the masses about their rights of fair practices to be adopted by lending banks, financial institutes and credit card companies. “Banks and their recovery agents have crossed all limits of decency and often use the foulest of language in their effort to browbeat the customer into submission,’’ said president of CCAI Vijay Kamble at the meet.

Having represented several cases with the banks, most of them of foreign origin seeking relief for its members, CCAI has taken out a morcha last week in Mumbai resulting in a promise by RBI Governor to take stringent action against banks practicing unfair and illegal practices to recover their dues. “Not only that, the ICICI Bank has agreed to form a committee of five members from both sides to solve any problems related to recovery harassments,” he said.

General secretary of CCAI Vinodkumar Chand said that despite the Indian Banks Association (IBA) framing clear-cut rules against using musclemen to threaten defaulters that has resulted in a few suicides and destroyed many families, the banks despite being signatories are seen violating it. This clearly indicates that the banks do not care about the law of land and are taking it upon themselves to subvert the proper legal process laid as per the law, he said.