State Governments Requested to issue Instructions to their Police for Vigorous Action under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978
The Minister of Corporate Affairs has written to State Chief Ministers requesting State Governments to issue instructions to their State Police Authorities for vigorous action under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 as Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) activities fall within the purview of Money Circulation Scheme (the said Act is administered by the Ministry of Finance). Giving this information in written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today, Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of Corporate Affairs, said that he has also written to the Finance Minister to increase surveillance by the Reserve Bank of India over unauthorized Non-Banking Finance Companies. Model rules under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 have been sent by the Ministry of Finance to the State Governments for notification.
Shri Pilot informed the House that the creation of awareness among investors is primarily through the Investor Awareness Programmes conducted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in association with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, the Institute of Company Secretaries of India and the Institute of Cost Accountants of India. These programmes aim at spreading investor awareness throughout the country. The Institutes conduct the programmes in various cities and towns (including small towns) and include distribution of booklets on investor awareness in different languages. In order to reach out to larger section of the society, it has been recently decided to send bulk short messages on BSNL’s network, crawler/ticker message on the news channel of Doordarshan and its Regional Kendras. In addition, a brief investor awareness message is planned to be displayed on Post Office Savings Bank Passbooks. Besides, to ensure better utilisation of resources and increase the outreach of messages, the possibility of having joint campaigns through organisations like SEBI is also being explored, Shri Pilot said.
