Andhra Pradesh credits Rs.666 cr into 7 lakh Agri Gold victims\' accounts
Vijayawada: Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said on Tuesday that the state government has credited Rs 666.84 crore into the accounts of over seven lakh Agri Gold victims who had deposited upto Rs 20,000 each in the property-linked financial enterprise and lost the money.
The Chief Minister said that the state government is keeping up a promise it had made to those victims. The government has credited Rs 905.57 crore to benefit almost 10.4 lakh families in two phases.
The CM said the Agri Gold scam had taken place with the involvement of Telugu Desam leaders. He criticised the previous government headed by Chandrababu Naidu for abandoning the victims and trying to “appropriate” the Agri Gold properties.
The CM said that, in the coming days, the government would take steps to sell the attached properties of Agri Gold and compensate all the victims. He had heard the victims of Agri Gold from every district expressing their agony and requesting him to help get back their hard-earned money, Jagan said.
The victims include daily ordinary labourers to middle-class families, who all deposited their earnings in the “money-growth” scheme. Sadly, they went into problems with the Agri Gold firm collapsing.
The Chief Minister said the state government has credited, in all, Rs 905.57 crore to banks, to be distributed to 10.4 lakh families in two phases.
“There is no instance of any government in the country taking the responsibility for restoring money to families who were betrayed by a private sector company. As identified by the district legal service authority (DLSA), the state government had released Rs238.73 crore in November 2019, to be given to 3.4 lakh Agri Gold victims who had made less than Rs 10,000 deposits. Those who were left out in the first tranche, almost 3.86 lakh depositors, could get a newly credited amount of Rs207.61 crore on Tuesday, he said.
The entire process is being done in a most-transparent way through volunteers and tracking by CID officials, he said.
The Chief Minister said the scam was enacted for the benefit of the leaders of the TD, or those in the previous government, who were also part of the company management. Although the TD government promised to help the victims during the 2014 elections, all it did in five years of its term was to loot the company’s properties and abandon the victims, Jagan said.
He added that the Naidu-led government dragged the matter for long and released a GO to compensate the families, just two months before the 2019 elections. Even after sanctioning Rs 785 crore to compensate those families, it didn’t bother to pay even a single rupee to those victims, the CM said.
Deputy Chief Ministers Dharmana Krishnadas and Pamula Pushpasrivani, home minister Mekathoti Sucharitha, Panchayat Raj and rural development minister Peddireddy Ramachandrareddy, municipal and urban development minister Botsa Satyanarayana, R&B minister Sankaranarayana, BC welfare minister Venugopalakrishna, chief secretary Adityanath Das, DGP Gautam Sawang, CID additional DGP Sunil Kumar home secretary Kumara Viswajeet and MLC Lella Appireddy were among those present.
