Government has informed that there are over eight thousand wilful defaulters who owe banks an amount of around 76,000 crore rupees. A total of 1,724 FIRs have been filed in the last financial year in this matter. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley informed this in the Rajya Sabha today during Question Hour. He said a Joint Committee of Parliament is presently looking into a Bill relating to debt recovery. The Bill aims to empower banks to take more effective steps in dealing with default situations. Mr Jaitley said the Debt Recovery Tribunals have to be made more effective and government has proposed increasing the number of these tribunals. <br/><br/>The Minister said many defaults pertain to sectors like steel, infrastructure and power and government has worked in the last one and a half years to address problems of these sectors. He said several other measures have been taken to help banks in such situations and added that the insolvency law has also been recently passed.