Editor's pick of the day: Supreme Court offers interim relief to stressed power assets

We are still in September, but if there is one thing that will stand out from the business and finance worlds of India for 2018, it will be the revelation that the banking sector in the country is one hot mess. We will remember a few terms – Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi (filed under “Big Fraud”); Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (filed under “Big Law”); and NPA (filed under “Big Number With Too Many Zeros”).

The last one – Non-Performing Assets (simply put, a loan that’s gone sour or getting there) – has become such a humongous issue that only recently Prof Raghuram Rajan, ex-Governor of RBI and one of the first in India to get all Nostradamus about the problem NPAs would become, was asked to submit his report on the issue by the Parliament Estimates Committee headed by Dr Murli Manohar Joshi (we dug into the report here.)

NPAs in the power sector especially have become huge, and a huge headache. On the 11th of September, a bench headed by Justice RF Nariman (him of 377 fame, among other things) at the Supreme Court has asked banks to maintain status quo and not to initiate insolvency proceedings against loan defaulting power companies in the country.

The judgement, and the larger issue of ever-enlarging NPAs in the power sector constitute the main theme of our Story of the Day today.