As soon as the Rajasthan govt decided to launch a website where one can complain against cheating by co-operative organizations, there has been a flood of complaints from the helpless victims.
There are reports that till recently more than 4500 complaints were registered related to frauds in Credit Cooperative Societies of Rajasthan on the website of the Cooperative Department within a span of 20 days. The complaints related to scams involved about Rs 142 crore.
Readers would recall that scams came to light after the complaints related to Adarsh Credit Cooperative Society, Sanjivani Navjeevan and several other big credit co-ops were received.
After receiving complaints, Rajasthan Cooperative Department came down hard on frauds and last month released a link to register online complaints on the website where over 4500 complaints were registered.
The cooperative department has now started hearing the complaints in the court of the Registrar of Co-operatives every Saturday.
Besides, notices have also been issued to 49 credit co-operative societies involved in frauds. They have been asked to return investors’ money in 15 days, failing which their accounts will be seized and action taken against them.
The Central Government has implemented the Banning of Unregulated Deposits Act several months back and Rajasthan is the only state where the first action has been initiated. Under this Act, the Registrar of Co-operatives has been declared as the competent authority with powers of the Civil Court.
The Act also empowers the registrar to seize the accounts and assets of wrongdoing societies. Cooperative registrar Neeraj K. Pawan told the media that the department is now collecting information about the accounts and assets of these societies. If complaints of investors are found correct at the hearing, then the money will be returned to investors by selling cooperative societies’ assets.