Purpose. This study examines the operational efficiency of twelve Indian Public Sector Banks (PSBs) over the financial years 2020–2024—a period encompassing post-consolidation restructuring, the COVID-19 disruption, and accelerated regulatory reforms. It constitutes the first systematic efficiency assessment of the restructured PSB landscape following the landmark 2019–2020 bank mergers that reduced the number of state-owned banks from 27 to 12. Methodology. A two-stage analytical framework is employed. In Stage I, an input-oriented Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BCC) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model under Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) is applied, using three inputs (total deposits, employee expenses, and fixed assets) and two outputs (total advances and investments) to generate bank-level efficiency scores. In Stage II, a Tobit regression model examines the influence of Return on Equity (ROE) and the Net Non-Performing Assets (NPA) ratio on these scores. Key Findings. The sector-wide mean efficiency score of 0.579 reveals a substantial—and largely persistent—gap from the best-practice frontier, implying an average input-reduction potential of approximately 42% without output loss. Efficiency is sharply bifurcated: Punjab & Sind Bank, SBI, and Union Bank consistently approximate frontier performance, while Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Bank of India record deep and structurally entrenched inefficiencies. The Tobit estimates show that neither ROE nor the NPA ratio exerts statistically significant influence on efficiency in the study period, a finding attributed to compressed cross-sectional variation in NPA levels following RBI-mandated provisioning norms and government recapitalization. Contribution. The study provides the first post-merger, post-COVID empirical efficiency baseline for the restructured Indian public banking sector, demonstrating that consolidation has yielded uneven efficiency gains and that scale and managerial quality—rather than profitability or NPA metrics alone—remain the primary drivers of efficiency heterogeneity.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis · Bank Efficiency · Tobit Regression · Non-Performing Assets · Public Sector Banks · India · Post-Merger Performance