July 29, 2019
Derek O’Brien speaks on The Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir, this is a good Bill and this Bill has being scrutinised. We welcome this Bill and congratulate the Finance Minister and the Minister of State because we believe this is the way legislation should be done. This is the first Bill in this session, Bill number 15, which is going to be passed with parliamentary scrutiny and I repeat myself, that none of the earlier 14 Bills were passed with parliamentary scrutiny.
Sir, when we scrutinise Bills, we get the opportunity to tighten up the Bill. So I have a suggestion which came from the parliamentary committee and which I will dwell on too. We need to understand what this Bill will stop ghotalas like the Pearl Chit Fund ghotala – a ghotala of Rs 49,000 crore which has been going on for 20 years. A former constitutional functionary was the legal advisor to the Pearl Group and this is a serious ghotala which took place. The second ghotala, which was in Gujarat and which is still not solved, is the Oscar Chit Fund scam, and no one writes about this. Now we can come to Bengal – Sanchayita ghotala of the 1980s. The Oscar Chit Fund ghotala also spread to Odisha and Maharashtra.
So I am glad with this Bill. All this nonsense will be stopped. Lots of poor people were duped because of all these scams. The Bengal Government in the last five to six years has come out with a commission to return the money to those who were duped.
On the committee recommendation I would like to say one point. The committee recommends the deletion of the words, “save as otherwise provided in the SARFAESI Act, 2002 or the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016’ from Clause 12 to comprehensively fortify the interests of depositors. This has not been accepted by the Government. We have not opposed this Bill but we do need a clarification. There are four other points and other suggestions on the Bill itself which my colleague, who will speak later will make. Thank you.
