Even as the state witnesses sabre rattling between coalition partners Congress and NCP over the board of directors of the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank (MSCB) being dissolved by the RBI,the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the legislature has pointed out that the sugar barons tended to take benefit of loopholes in the co-operative sector laws to liquidate factories and sell them while defaulting on the payment of government dues. The PAC has sought that these legal lacunae be done away with. There are many sugar factories in the state which have taken loans from the government or the co-operative banks for erecting the factory (and).. have arrears to the tune of crores of rupees due to the government. Such sugar factories are liquidated because they are shut down over a period of time or because they are sick and their auction sale price is shown very low and a member from the board of directors purchases the factory and starts it on a private basis, the PAC said in its report,while pointing out that the co-operative sugar factories were being run on a private basis. The committee is headed by senior BJP MLA from Kasba Peth in Pune Girish Bapat. Hence the provisions of the co-operative law are taken benefit of (and) many co-operative sugar factories are liquidated and shut down and the state governments dues running into crores are defaulted upon by selling it. In order to stop such practices,the government must make the necessary amendments to the co-operative law and similarly the committee recommends that strict rules must be framed by the government and must be implemented strictly to ensure that the sugar factories which have pending government loans cannot be liquidated without paying the default of the governments and banks dues, the PAC report said. It also indicted the state government on grounds that it had not laid down conditions for loans to the tune of Rs 57.08 crore given to 71 co-operative sugar factories from August 1993 to December 2002 or had not informed them (sugar factories) about these rules that led to a situation where interest to the tune of several crores of rupees could not be recovered by the government.
