BJP leader and Union Minister Babul Supriyo welcomed the central cabinet’s decision to amend The Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2018 saying the move will help fight the illegal operators.
“New stricter and more comprehensive ‘Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill’ will help common man fight against illegal operators,” he tweeted with the hashtag ‘#ModiStopsChitFundScams’.
The Union cabinet on Wednesday cleared an amendment to the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill 2018 that aims to tighten norms related to the functioning of chit fund companies and put in place a mechanism to compensate those defrauded by such schemes.
In a major decision to help innocuous investors not to fall into the trappings of fraudsters and chit fund operators those played havoc with poor and middle class people in West Bengal and few other eastern states, the Union cabinet on Wednesday gave its green signal to a Bill that provides for severe punishment and heavy pecuniary fines for such operatives to act as deterrent.
The proposed Bill would significantly also provide for ‘attachment’ of properties and assets by the Competent Authority, and subsequent realization of assets for repayment to depositors.
Moreover, tightening rules on chit funds and other unregulated deposit schemes, the new draft law will also ensure that there “clear-cut time lines” for attachment of properties of the fraud operators.
This comes at a time when BJP-led NDA regime is in intense conflict with Mamata Banerjee regime for probe into the chit fund scams.
Two major such scandals surfaced in the state – Sharada and Rose Valley.
The chit fund scams had left its mark in other eastern Indian states such as Odisha and Tripura also.
If Sharada chit fund scam has been a pot-boiler plot in West Bengal. Tripura under Marxists’ regime had its version in Rose Valley Chit Fund scam. Bijitha Nath, the high profile former Tripura
Minister for Social Welfare, Social Education, Science and Technology, was at the receiving end of the scandal and various allegations.
The CBI has lodged about 166 cases in the last four years in chit funds and multi-crore scams, with the maximum in West Bengal and Odisha, sources said.(UNI)
