Passing legislation in India not easy job: Chidambaram

As the government races against the political calendar, the Opposition’s hurdle to passage of major economic reforms in Parliament has appeared to have peeved Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who on Wednesday, said passing legislations in India was not an easy job, nevertheless, the government would keep trying.

“Passing legislation in India is not easy with coalitions and the legitimisation of obstruction as a parliamentary tactic,” Chidambaram said addressing a seminar of Indian Financial Code framed by Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) with a view to update the laws and regulations dealing with the sector.

 FSLRC, which was set up to rewrite and update the age-old Indian financial sector laws, has recommended vast changes, including the role of the Reserve Bank of India.

 Some of the major economic reforms bills, including the insurance and pension bills, companies bill, land acquisition bill and others have not seen the light of the day due to lack of floor coordination in Parliament.

 The minister also expressed concern over the Companies Bill, which has been passed by the Lok Sabha but pending in the Rajya Sabha.

 Chidambaram also said that the government was making efforts to frame a new law to oversee financial sector in the wake of Ponzi schemes causing huge losses to common people.

 The recent collapse of chit-fund company Saradha in West Bengal, in which people have lost thousands of crores, has underlined the need for tightening regulatory mechanism to deal with collective investment and Ponzi schemes.

 "The present arrangements have a number of gaps, where no regulators are unambiguously in-charge, such as issue of regulatory oversight over diverse Ponzi schemes that we have discovered recently. These are cleverly designed to be out of the purview of regulatory agencies," the minister said.

 Seeking to change some of the archaic financial sector laws, the minister said the present financial architecture has evolved over the years with a sequence of “piecemeal measures and piecemeal legislations and is not comprehensively designed to meet some key objectives".