Govt Securities Bill taken up in RS amid protests, walkout

New Delhi, Aug 14 (UNI) Amid a walkout by SP, AIADMK and TDP members, the Rajya Sabha today passed the Government Securities Bill, 2006 that seeks to amend the law relating to management of Government securities (G-Secs) by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Earlier, two other Bills -- Central Silk Board (Amendment) Bill, 2005, and The Produce Cess Laws (Abolition) Bill, 2006, -- were passed without much discussion in the absence of adequate number of members in the House.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram, replying to the members' concerns, said the Bill sought to bring in provisions missing in the earlier legislation by providing for the rights and nomination of the person who would succeed in the event of death of the holder of the G-Secs.

He told the House that six years' limitation had been fixed and the government's liability would terminate on the expiry of the time limit. However, in exceptional cases the ''RBI may specify securities interest to be paid even after the expiry of six years,'' the Minister added.

Admitting that there was a ''small'' amount of unclaimed deposits lying with the banks even many years after the lapse of the bonds, he said this was due to the retail investors having suffered their loss, or the bonds having been destroyed in fire, mutilated or misplaced.

To BJP member S S Ahluwalia's intervention regarding that the unclaimed deposits was not a small amount, Mr Chidambaram noted that the amount of unclaimed deposits stood at Rs 200 crore which he claimed was a small fraction of the total deposits.

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