“Apart from placing the details of the upcoming e-auctions on our own portal, the bank is also uploading the auctions on the common portal designed by the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) for displaying properties being auctioned by the banks, starting with public sector banks,” Mehta said.

Last month, the lending major decided to place more than 4,000 properties all over India on e-auction as part of its loan recovery effort. The PNB is also expected to recover a substantial amount from its NPA recovery mechanism—”Mission Gandhigiri”—which will be completing two years of its operations. Launched in May 2017, the mission has consistently delivered positive results.

It was born out of the need to name and shame the defaulters and urge them to pay back by increasing societal pressure. “Mission Gandhigiri” has a dedicated recovery team across all circles of the bank. Accordingly, the passive recovery mechanism entails the team members visiting the borrowers’ office or residence and sitting there silently with placards that have hard-hitting messages such as “It is public money, please repay the loans”.

However, for high value stressed assets, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has emerged as the primary platform for resolution, Mehta said. Recently, the bank bounced back into the black for the first time in the last three quarters with a net profit of Rs 247 crore for the third quarter ended December 2018.

The net profit during the quarter under review had risen 7.1 percent to Rs 247 crore over the Rs 230 crore profit after tax (PAT) reported for the corresponding quarter of 2017-18. The bank, hit badly by the multi-million dollar Nirav Modi scam last year, posted a net loss of Rs 4,532 crore during the July-September quarter of the current fiscal.