Private banks and housing financiers be brought under the RTI

3/4ths of the middle class homes in the country are mortgaged to banks or housing finance companies. If you default for 3 months, they declare your loan as an NPA and move in to possess it.

Officers are keen to re-possess even if total arrears is only 10 or 12 thousand on a property worth 10-50 lakhs. They write in re-possessing charges of 10 percent of the cost of the property and appropriate it to themselves. They then sell off the property at cheap prices to the housing mafia, and pocket the commissions.

Except government owned banks and housing companies, no player here comes under the RTI. Private housing financiers like the HDFC do not come under the Ombudsman even.  Yet they are all given arbitrary powers to throw non-wilful defaulters of small amounts on to the streets under the SARFAESI.

Housing is a basic need of a core nature, more essential than bureaucratic services. Yet no media or NGO/activist raises this deadly issue, of the public and the consumer being kept off  RTI rights on these private predators.