Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in the Lok Sabha election campaign that if his government is formed for the third time, a law will be made to return the money and property seized by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to the poor people. He had said that the government will return the money to those who have been looted. In this context, he had mentioned the teacher recruitment scam in West Bengal. He had mentioned the alleged scam of giving jobs in exchange for land when Lalu Prasad was the Railway Minister and the alleged looting of thousands of crores of rupees by cooperative banks in Kerala.
The Prime Minister had said that his team is working on a plan to return the land to the people in Bihar whose land was taken or to return the money to the poor from whom money was taken in the teacher recruitment scam. He even said that advice is being taken from legal experts in this regard. The Prime Minister had said that some such provision has been made in the new Indian Justice Code.
The question is that it has been four months since Narendra Modi’s third government was formed. The alleged achievements of the first 100 days were also trumpeted, but what happened to the return of the money seized by ED to the people? The Prime Minister had said that ED has seized Rs 1.5 lakh crore and the money is lying here and there. Even after four months of government formation, it seems that the process of taking legal opinion has not been completed and that is why there is no discussion of returning people’s money. Might it happen that this also turns out to be a gimmick like a plan to bring back black money stashed abroad?
This question is arising because there is no clarity in this matter. The first problem is that if taking and giving bribe are both crimes in India, then will those who take jobs by giving land not be punished? If the crime is proved, then along with Lalu Prasad, those people who had given land to get a job will also be criminals. Will their land be returned and also be punished? Similarly, no matter how poor he is, if someone has taken the job of a teacher by paying money, will he not be considered a criminal? The second problem is that what will happen if the scam which the Prime Minister was talking about during the election campaign is not proved to be a crime and the accused are acquitted? How can money seized from an accused be distributed without a final court decision?
Returning the money of those who deposited money in Sahara or Rose Valley Chitfund Company is a different matter. Or returning the money of those who deposited money in cooperative banks of Kerala is a different matter. People invested or deposited money there and the company committed fraud. Even if the company is not proven to be a fraud, it would not be wrong to return the depositors’ money. But there is a lot of technical problem in the alleged scam. It is noteworthy that the return of some money of those who invested in Rose Valley Chitfund has started. For this, a committee was formed in 2015 on the orders of the High Court and now after nine years, Rs 10,000 each has been returned to some investors out of the money seized by the ED. But this is a completely different matter. The Prime Minister did not mention it. There is no news of any work being done yet on what he had mentioned.