The state government has begun digitisation of chit fund claim documents received by Justice Patra Commission to expedite the refund of money to duped investors of Ponzi firms.
It may be noted the Odisha government has set up a Rs 300 crore corpus fund for return of money to the victims of chit fund scam, but no payment has been made from this fund in the absence of proper identification of investors.
In the first phase, a total 210,000 claims would be scanned and digitised to segregate the small and large investors. As per the criteria set by the commission, people who have invested less than Rs 10,000 in a chit fund company are classified as small investors and will get priority in refund of money. The commission has so far received about five and half lakh claims.
Last year, the government had decided to digitise the claims documents as the one-man commission expressed its inability to verify the claims manually. The government wanted to reconcile all such claims with the data of chit fund companies to avoid duplication.
Accordingly, the government had approved a proposal of Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) to buy a server for creation of a database containing names of the depositors.
The digitisation process would be carried out by OCAC to create a database of the investors to match it with records submitted by the chit fund companies.
In 2013, when the irregularities in chit fund schemes came to highlight, the state government had announced creation of a Rs 300 crore corpus fund to return money to the investors and had created a commission headed by retired Justice R K Patra to receive the affidavits from the victims.
It had also passed two acts, which empowered it to abolish the chit fund companies under cooperative act and enabled it to auction properties owned by these Ponzi firms. It had ordered an inquiry by crime branch department of the state police to find out the people behind the scam.Last year, it proposed to amend the Orissa Protection of Interest of Depositors Act, to define small investors as it wanted to give priority to them. By virtue of the act, the economic offences wing of the state police attached movable and immovable properties of 14 chit fund firms running into a few thousand crores. However, some of the properties have been handed over to Enforcement Directorate, which is also probing money trail of the chit firms along with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In the last winter session of the state assembly, the government had proposed to set aside Rs 300 crore for the corpus fund for the current fiscal in the supplementary budget. It had then said that the money would be refunded to small and genuine investors based on the suggestions of justice P K Patra Commission.
