- Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura
Agartala, July 13, 2022 : Tripura’s council of ministers on Tuesday in a meeting enacted ‘Tripura Banning on Unregulated Deposit Schemes’ following the ‘Banning on Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act 2019’ framed by the central government and repealed the previous state law in force, said Law and Parliamentary Affairs minister Ratanlal Nath.
“The previous government enforced Tripura Protection of interest of Depositors in 2000 through which penal sanctions were awarded to offenders accused of Chit Funds. The state government has cleared it’s stand of initiating stringent action against those unregulated non-banking financial companies by approving the rules of the central act”, said Nath while announcing the cabinet decision taken in a meeting under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha at a press conference in Civil Secretariat here on Tuesday evening.
He said “There is no use of the law that was in force earlier as the central government has enacted a stricter law in 2019.”
Citing a justification in view of his statement, Law and Parliamentary Affairs minister said “The Deputy Collector was given the charge of the enforcing official according to the previous law while the custodian of enforcement of the central law was given the charge to the Finance department’s Secretary. This significantly revealed that the present rules is much stricter than the previous one. Moreover, the new act provides penal sanctions from minimum one year to maximum 10 years with a minimum penalty of Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.”
Nath said “The court has allowed the state government to attach properties of 20 NBFCs, those were once functional in Tripura. Following Court’s order, a total of 66 properties have been attached and procedures initiated to sell 34 of them. However, the process couldn’t be completed in time due to COVID pandemic.”
Addressing the mediapersons, Nath said that nearly 15,206 depositors have submitted their claims to the state government, who were cheated by such financial companies in eight sub-divisions like Udaipur, Belonia, Sadar, Santirbazar, Kumarghat, Sabroom, etc. Among these, a disputed property close to India-Bangladesh international border at Sabroom under South Tripura district has been acquired by the state government. The integrated Check Post to be built in Sabroom is proposed on that property. It belonged to Waris Finance and Investment Limited. The depositors will be compensated after attachment of these properties.
