Coming down heavily on Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for not confirming that whether the depositors who have lost their money in the chit fund scams will be paid out of the recently-declared Rs 300-crore corpus for chit fund victims, Utkal Bharat president MA Kharabela Swain on Friday threatened to go to court of law in case the payment to the depositors is made from public money.
“Recently, Naveen Patnaik announced that his Government will form a corpus of Rs 300 crore to compensate the chit fund victims in lines of the steps initiated by the West Bengal Government. While the WB Government has declared to mobilise resources for such funding by additional taxation on cigarettes, it is not clear where from the Odisha Government will arrange funds for the corpus. Will the funding be sourced from the State Budget or from the additional taxationIJ” asked Swain at a Press conference here.
“The depositors should be paid out of the sales proceeds of the assets of those financial institutions which have shrewdly looted them. We also suggest that one per cent of the deposits of these nonbanking finance companies (NBFCs) be kept in the corpus,” said Swain.
He ridiculed the Chief Minister’s earlier announcement that a sitting judge of the High Court would inquire into the chit fund scams. “Didn’t the Government know that out of the sanctioned 27 judges, there are now only 11 judges in the State High Court, one of whom could not be spared to head the commissionIJ So, is it not a fact that the Government is intentionally delaying the process of investigation because of involvement of some prominent people in the ruling party in the chit fund scamsIJ” asked Swain. He charged the Government with not collecting information from the block level to ascertain the exact number of chit fund victims and the extent of frauds.
He also alleged that the Crime Branch officials had intentionally gagged the mouth of Seashore CMD Prasant Dash at the Bhubaneswar airport when he was brought from Mumbai so that he did not speak to the media.
“Is it not because of the apprehension that he might mention the names of important people connected with the scamIJ” asked Swain. As the ruling BJD is clearly involved in the scam, there is bleak chance for the depositors to get back their money, observed Swain.