Govt to place reports of chit fund commission report and ATR in assembly in due time, says Finance Minister; but does not give any timeline

Bhubaneswar, 25/11: Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari said in the state assembly today that the inquiry reports of Justice MM Das Commission, probing into the multi-crore chit fund scam  and the action taken report (ATR) would be placed in the House in “due time”. However, he did not give the specific time line, much to the disappointment of the duped investors. It may be recalled that the state government had set up a Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice (Retd) RK Patra in July, 2013 to probe into the multi-crore chit fund scam. Subsequently, Justice MM Das took over on February 5, , 2015 after demise of Justice Patra. State government floated a corpus fund of Rs 300 crore to pay the “small investors”, who had deposited less than Rs 10,000 each in the sham chit fund companies. Justice MM Das Commission has received around 10 lakh affidavits from the investors across the state, who had nearly deposited Rs 3000 crore in around 500 chit fund companies. Meanwhile, the Commission has recommended to the state government to pay the identified small investors their invested money from the corpus fund raised by it for this purpose. “The commission has so far submitted seven interim reports after scrutinizing the affidavits. The state government has initiated action on the recommendations of the Justice MM Das Commission in these interim reports”, said the Finance Minister stating that the state government would table all the reports of the Commission and the action take report in the assembly after receipt of the Commission’s final report. However, he did not give any specific time line.