Tripura asks Centre to expedite chit fund cases probe

Agartala, June 10 (IANS) The BJP government in Tripura has asked the Centre to expedite the probe into all the 74 chit fund cases in connection with the unlawful collection of money from people by illegal chit fund organisations, an official said on Monday.

Within a month of coming to power in March last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Tripura handed over all the 74 chit fund cases being investigated by the state government's Special Investigation Team (SIT) to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the illegal collection of money from people by the unauthorised chit fund operators.

In a letter to the Union Ministry of Personnel last week, the Tripura Home Department asked the former to expedite the probe into the 74 chit fund cases, a Home Department official said here.

BJP spokesman Ashok Sinha said that the previous Left Front government in the state had, in various ways, backed the unauthorised chit fund organisations and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) in looting huge amounts of money from lakhs of gullible people.

"The CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led government was averse to handing over all the cases related to chit fund organisations and NBFCs to the CBI," he said.

Sinha, accompanied by another spokesperson, Nabendu Bhattacharjee, told the media that the BJP government's vision was to free Tripura of corruption and the drugs menace.

The opposition CPI-M leaders strongly refuted the accusations. CPI-M Central Committee member and Left Front convenor Bijan Dhar said it was widely known that the CBI had been misused by the ruling parties at the Centre.

"No CPI-M leader or former Left Front ministers were involved with any chit fund organisations," Dhar told the media, adding that "if CBI wants any information from the party leaders they would share...there is no problem in it".

The BJP, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have all charged the previous Left Front government with promoting illegal chit fund organisations and unauthorised NBFCs in Tripura.

The erstwhile Left Front government in Tripura had enacted a law in 2000 to deal with illegal NBFCs and chit fund organisations and, since 2016, had began confiscating all movable and immovable properties in the state of the Rose Valley group .

Rose Valley, a Kolkata-based chit fund company, is now under the scanner of the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI, while the company's sole proprietor and Chairman Gautam Kundu and other important functionaries were arrested in Kolkata in 2015.

The Tripura High Court had, in 2015, asked the state government to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the activities of unlawful NBFCs and chit fund organisations.

In May 2013, the earlier Left government had referred 37 cases related to chit fund companies and NBFCs to the CBI. The Central agency, however, took up only five cases.