On August 2, the PMO conveyed the directions of the PM “that the Department of Financial Services/RBI may be advised to commit to a road map laying down specific state-wise annual targets over a period of 3 years to ensure that the level of priority sector lending to minority communities is raised to 15% in compliance of the Cabinet decision.” It is understood that banks were not happy with the plan to ensure that a fixed percentage of the priority credit earmarked for “weaker sections” was to be put aside for minorities.

Resistance to quantifying the amount led to this particular measure taking some time to work out, but now, the PMO has asked the Department of Finance Services to scale up the percentage of priority-sector lending to minorities to 15% of all priority-sector lending over three years. To this effect, the following were identified as the next steps as the RBI has issued instructions to public and private banks: NABARD to set up funds for training and re-skilling minorities; more branches of public sector banks in Muslim-concentration districts; regular monitoring of loan disbursals.