BHUBANESWAR: A day after Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi revealed he also was a victim of chit fund scam, state BJP president Manmohan Samal on Wednesday said refund of deposits to affected investors is under active consideration of the state government.
Samal told reporters that the government is reviewing the report submitted by the judicial commission which probed into the multi-crore chit fund scam in the state.
“The government is taking all possible steps to return money to the affected people. A policy decision will be taken soon and the entire process will be completed shortly. Very soon, the affected people will get their money back,” said Samal.
Blaming the previous BJD government for not fulfilling its promise to refund the depositors, Samal said the BJP administration is committed to refund the money as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the statement of the chief minister has revived the politics over the chit-fund issue. Deputy leader of Opposition in the Assembly Prasanna Acharya targeted the BJP government for not taking any concrete action to refund money to the small investors. The BJP government makes a lot of noise but is doing nothing, he said. “Speeches are not enough. Action matters,” Acharya added.
Similarly, senior Congress leader Niranjana Patnaik strongly criticised the government on the issue saying it has not made any progress even six months after coming to power. The government has not even fixed a deadline when the investors will get back their money, he said.
The BJD government had set up a judicial commission of inquiry in July 2013 to probe into the chit fund scam which is estimated at Rs 3,000 crore. Justice Radha Krishna Patra, the former Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court was the head of the commission. Patra passed away on January 28, 2015 following a brief illness.
Justice Madan Mohan Das, a retired judge of Orissa High Court then headed the panel in February 2015 and submitted the seventh interim report to the government in July 2019. The report has not been made public yet.