Eight months after passing a “sincere and watertight” Anti-Chit Fund Bill the Mamata Banerjee Government on Thursday scrapped the older draft for a new one supposedly to snuff out the legal drawbacks and “provide more teeth to the new enactment.”
The new Bill passed unanimously “but with definite objections” from the Opposition parties, was more stringent, State Finance Minister claimed.
The older Bill was passed in April this year amid protests from the left leadership which claimed the Government was leaving loopholes in the Bill in order that it failed the Centre’s scrutiny: all in order to buy those involved in the scam time to escape with their ponzi fund booty.
Curiously the Bill that had been passed in April was the second such effort by the State Government as a previous Bill sent by the erstwhile left Government in 2009 had also to be called back on account of the legal ambiguities. The Centre had then pointed out the faults and asked the State to send an amended version of the legislation which it however refused to do sending a fresh draft for presidential consent.
The new West Bengal Protection of Interest of Depositors in Financial Establishments Bill, 2013 “has more teeth and is more stringent compared to the earlier one” Mitra said adding “it will help the Government to check the chit fund menace.”
However the Opposition left Front which had grudgingly okayed the earlier Bill, too saying, the draft was aimed more at protecting the culprits than safeguarding the interests of the depositors on Thursday repeated its complaint even as Opposition leader Dr Suryakanto Mishra said “we had cautioned the Government on the earlier Bill but they refused to listen to us. This time also they have left loopholes with a definite intention so that it again falls through helping in the final run those who polished off thousands of crores of rupees belonging to the poor depositors.”
The multi-crore chit fund scam exploded in the face of the Trinamool Government early this year with the names of a host of politicians including senior Ministers and MPs getting embroiled in the case.
Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh has already been arrested in the case while the clamour for a court-monitored CBI probe is getting louder by the day adding only to the embarrassment of the State Government.
On why the left backed the Bill despite it had reservations Mishra — who accused the Government of keeping the House in the dark on the changes the Centre proposed in the earlier Bill, — said “we wanted the Bill to first pass in any form so that the poor depositors can get their money back.”