Chit or 'cheat' fund? Andhra MP for a name change to 'fraternity fund'

Chit or cheat?

The Lok Sabha on Monday took up a discussion on the Chit Funds (Amen-dment) Bill. Among Lok Sabha members who partic-ipated in the discussion, the YSR Congress Party’s (YSRCP’s) Raghu Ramakrishna Raju Kanumuru (pictured) demanded a change in the nomenclature of not just the Bill but also in the way these schemes were named. The MP from Andhra Pradesh’s Narsapuram constituency said the word “chit” was being pronounced “cheat”, which was reducing the importance of such schemes for people with no banking facilities. He said the name “chit fund” should be changed to “fraternity fund”.

Gujral’s centenary

The 100th birth anniversary of former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral is on December 4. His son Naresh Gujral and the rest of his family will have a function at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Naresh Gujral is a Rajya Sabha member of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Gujral senior, who passed away in 2012, was in the Congress and then in the Janata Dal. For the function, those invited to speak are former president Pranab Mukherjee, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, former vice-president M Hamid Ansari, and Congress leader Karan Singh. Given Gujral senior’s interest in diplomacy and his stints as India’s ambassador to Moscow and as the country’s external affairs minister, there will be a discussion on India’s foreign policy titled “Continuity and Change”. Four former foreign secretaries Shivshankar Menon, K Raghunath, Kanwal Sibal, and Shyam Saran will participate in the discussion.

Proposal drowned

Computer Baba, self-proclaimed godman and chairman of the river trust for the Narmada-Kshipra and the Mandakini, surprised many when he announced that he would deploy some 2,000 sadhus (monks) on the banks of rivers in Madhya Pradesh to stop illegal mining. He said: “We will surprise the sand mafia.” The plan was to deploy four to eight groups of 250 to 300 sadhus each on the banks of the state’s many rivers. His scheme was shot down by the government. Mining Minister Pradeep Jaiswal jettisoned the plan, saying, “Computer Baba is a religious figure and chairman of a trust but he has nothing to do with mines and the minerals department.” Jaiswal said he should stick to “babagiri” and refrain from getting involved in the operations of government departments.