Left Front protest in Bengal house over adjournment motion refusal

Left Front members Monday held noisy protests in the West Bengal assembly after an adjournment motion brought by them that demanded placing and discussing a report submitted by a panel set up on the Saradha scam was not admitted by the chair.

Irate Left Front members trooped near the speaker's podium and raised slogans after Speaker Biman Banerjee refused to admit the motion on a report submitted by Justice (retd) Shyamal Kumar Sen, who chaired the commission.

Moving the motion, Leader of Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra said the commission was constituted to return money to those who lost their savings by parking their money in chit fund schemes run by various companies of the Saradha Group. But it was wound up before it could complete its task.

Banerjee said he would take up the issue with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee and the matter would be discussed in the business advisory committee meeting.

The Saradha scandal - the biggest to hit the state - came to light in April last year when the company closed shop across Bengal, unable to pay back the depositors, mainly poorer sections of the people, who had parked their life's savings with the company, lured by the promise of huge returns.

As the company went bust, there was a spate of suicides by agents and investors and protests across the state.

Saradha promoter Sudipta Sen was arrested with his close aides from Sonmarg in Jammu and Kashmir.

Days after the scandal came to light, the chief minister announced that a Rs.500 crore corpus would be set up to indemnify the duped investors.

The Sen commission was constituted by the state government to probe the scam and recommend ways of returning money to the depositors.

However, months after the Supreme Court handed over the responsibility of probing the scam to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the state government wound up the commission. Sen then compiled a report and sent it to the state government.