Probing into the chit fund scam in Odisha, the Justice MM Das Commission of Inquiry submitted its second interim report to the State Government on Friday. The commission had submitted its first report in May last year.
The commission, among other things, has been asked to make suggestions as to how the smaller investors (investing less than Rs 10,000) would get back their money from the corpus fund of Rs 300 crore set up by the State Government.
While the contents of the first interim report have not been made public yet, the submission of the second report at a time when the panchayat elections in the State are underway has drawn flak from opposition political parties.
Involvement of several BJD leaders in the chit fund scam is a major plank on which the opposition parties are campaigning to corner the ruling BJD in the elections. And when the model code of conduct is in force, the BJP and the Congress have questioned the timing of the report submission.
Moreover, the commission has not also covered enough grounds necessitating it to submit its second report after the first one was submitted less than a year ago.
“Out of some eight lakh affidavits received, the commission had submitted its first report after vetting only 27000 affidavits. Now, what was the necessity to submit the second report after examining another 34,000 affidavits,” questioned BJP spokesperson Sajjan Sharma, adding that his party has complained about it to the State Election Commission.
Congress spokesperson Sulochana Das too alleged that the submission of the report is a blatant violation of the model code of conduct.
“There was no problem for the commission in presenting the report after the elections were over,” Das told reporters.
It may be mentioned that the BJP and the Congress last year had demanded removal of Justice Das from the commission for his unpleasant remarks about the poor investors and giving a clean chit to the Government on the scam at a BJD-sponsored public meeting.