Patna, Dec. 19: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today expressed concern over the “lackadaisical approach” of commercial banks in dis-bursing loans and suggested that the Centre should consider bringing banking services under the ambit of the citizen’s charter.

“Banks either hesitate or take too much time to give loans. There should be a timeframe to reject or accept the applications. Banks can’t sit on applications for long. The need of the hour is to include banking service under the ambit of the proposed citizen charter as banking services are directly related to common people,” Modi said at a Nabard programme here.

Modi, who also holds the finance portfolio, asked banks to penalise officers concerned if loans are not disbursed to businessmen and farmers.

He said: “Banks should not only keep in mind the deposits collected by the officials while assessing their performance. They should also consider the aspect of non-disbursal of loans. If an official deliberately rejects a genuine loan appli-cation, there must be a prov-ision to take punitive action against him or her.”

Modi also released a state focus paper prepared by Nabard which projected an estimated total credit potential of Rs 32,077 crore under various priority sector for 2012-13 fiscal. The state focus paper is an aggregation of the potential-linked credit plan of all the 38 districts. It will be used as a reference document for the development planning.

Development commissioner A.K. Sinha, Nabard chief general manager V. Mohan Das, Reserve Bank of India regional director M.K. Sinha and State Bank of India chief general manager Jeevandas Narayan attended the programme.