By Our Correspondent in Bhubaneswar, February 4, 2015 :

The Odisha government on Wednesday appointed Justice Madan Mohan Das as the chairman of the one man commission for verification and return of chit fund deposits raised by several unscrupulous financial companies.

The new appointment was necessitated by the death of Justice R K Patra on January 28, who was heading the panel since its constitution in July 2013.

Justice Das was a judge in Orissa High Court between 2003 and 2014.

The Panel has been flooded with more than 10 lakh claims from people across the state for return of their deposits. Now, the commission had sought the help of state-run Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) to digitize each and every claim and to reconcile them with the data received from chit fund firms.

But the digitization process moved in a snail’s pace which prompted Justice Patra to suggest that small investors, who had deposited upto Rs 10,000, must be identified on a priority basis and their deposits be refunded at the earliest.

Incidentally, the state government has allotted Rs 300 crore to form a corpus fund, which will be used to return money to the duped investors. The fund will also have more money money received from proceedings from the auction of the properties of chit fund firms.

Meanwhile, the economic offence wing (EOW) of the state police on Wednesday sought permission of the state government to attach properties of – Gajanan Property Dealer & Construction Private Ltd and Ascend Creation, two real estate companies of Kendrapara and Jajpur district respectively.

The properties of Gajanan include 7.14 acres land, a market complex and a Kalyan Mandap at Pattamundai. In case of Ascend, the EOW has sought permission to attache 9.9 acres of land, a car and a petrol pump at Rasulpur in Jajpur district.

It may be recalled that the EOW had earlier confiscated properties of Seashore and Artha Tatwa Group amounting several hundred crore rupees.

The CBI also on Wednesday raided several offices of Sharadha,a leading chit fund company in Puri, Koraput, Cuttack and Balasore along with its Kolkata offices. The Puri office was sealed by state EOW in April last year. The central investigating agency searched for additional documents not seized by the state police, official sources said.