The company, on the contrary, is exploring every accounting loophole to try and prove that it is sick and deserves the BIFR treatment. The entire episode illustrates the farce to which the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction has been reduced to. Companies now scramble for the privilege of being declared sick, which will open the doors to a cornucopia of soft loans, interest waivers, and other concessions. Bankers, especially public sector ones, usually cannot resist the pressures brought on them to fund the ailing unit, which is why they fight tooth and nail to avoid getting entangled with the BIFR.

Clearly, they view the agency more as a graveyard for industrial units rather thana place for rehabilitation. From the bankers' point of view, a reference to the BIFR spells interminable delays, besides much good money being thrown after the bad. If the BIFR were to have any use whatsoever, a reference to it should occur far before matters went totally out of hand.

Referrals at the last stages of the life of the commercial entity leaves hardly any scope for turning it around and most often, it is left to decay.

Even in cases where daring individuals or companies that take up the challenge of breathing in new life to the sick entities succeed in doing so, banks do not usually recover their full dues. Therefore the stance of Dunlop's bankers.