Slamming the State Government for hoodwinking thousands of duped investors in the chit fund scam, the Opposition Congress on Wednesday demanded Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to make a statement on the issue.
Raising the issue during the Zero hour in the State Assembly, leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh said around 20,000 small investors, who had deposited their hard earned money with various chit fund companies, were now gheraoing the MlAs of their respective regions, demanding to get back their money as the Government had failed to provide their money lost in the scam within the promised three months’ time out of a corpus fund.
Though the Government had constituted the corpus fund of Rs 300 crore and promised to pay back their deposits within three months’ time, the investors were yet to be compensated and their grievances redressed even after lapse of six months. Even no funds have been provided in the first Supplementary Budget to meet the requirement. No formal process has been started either for disbursement of the money, Singh regretted.
He alleged that the Commission of Inquiry set up to probe the chit fund scam was a ploy by the Chief Minister to divert the attention of the people. Singh said the Government had constituted a Commission headed former Justice RK Patra to probe the chit fund scam and the Commission had so far received around 10 lakh complaints. The Commission lacked manpower.
However, though the panel had already asked the Government for providing more staff to facilitate early inquiry into the scam, the latter is silent on the issue, Singh said. Alleging that the Commission was constituted to divert the attention of the people, the leader of Opposition said that the Government had asked the people duped by the fraudulent chit fund companies to register their complaints with the police stations. But despite the Supreme Court order, no police station was receiving the complaints, he said.
As some Ministers and a few ruling BJD leaders are involved in the scam, the Government is trying to hush up the issue, said Singh, urging the Chair to direct the Chief Minister to make a statement in the House, giving details of steps taken by the Government to return the depositors' money.