GUWAHATI, Nov 16 - Reacting to rumours regarding the possibility of the Union government re-introducing the controversial Finance Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill 2017, city-based NGO Save Guwahati Build Guwahati (SGBG) today said that it is important for the people to know the details of this legislation, before it is too late to oppose.
Stressing the need for awareness among the citizens over all types of legislation that are proposed by the Centre or the State government, the NGO said that public opinion matters a lot in a democracy and anti-people decisions can only be avoided if the people react in time.
�The Finance Minister of India brought the Bill named Finance Resolution and Deposit Insurance 2017, through which the government was trying to shift the responsibility to the depositors to absorb the losses of banks. Though it was withdrawn following persistent opposition and concern over the controversial �bail-in� clause, rumours surface time and again in news or in social media over possibility of the Bill coming back during the winter session of the Parliament,� SGBG president Krishna K Borooah stated.
�We, the people of Assam have had an experience of how the massive public protest was ignored by the policy-makers during the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), which was passed in the Parliament. In the case of FRDI also, we cannot be sure whether the government has totally dropped this idea or is planning to come up with a latest version of it,� he added.
The FRDI Bill had provisions for setting up a resolution corporation (RC) which can rescue banks, insurers, mutual funds etc., through a bail-in to help prevent the loss making banks going bankrupt through writing down the liabilities.
�Since such decisions affect the lives of a vast majority of people, we request civil society to rise to the occasion and to create a voice against this Bill. Also, we request our elected representatives to not support this Bill, if in future it is placed in the Parliament,� the SGBG added.
