MSME council has 200 cases piled up

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 14

A total of 200 cases of industrialists related with small and micro industrialists are lying pending with the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) council.

Some cases even dates back to 2011 and 2012. Notably, earlier there used to be a headquarters of the council in Chandigarh. But after the formation of the council at the district level, the cases pertaining to Jalandhar have got transferred here.

Members of the council said till now, at least 10 cases had been disposed of.

The council was started in the district in December last year. The council comprises of five members, which includes the Deputy Commissioner as its chairman; General Manager (GM), District Industry Centre (DIC), as member secretary; an advocate, a Lead District Manager (LDM); and an industrialist.

The council has been established to solve the matters of small scale industrialists and to help them get payments from other parties in case the latter do not return their due amount (payments).

One of the members Shant Kumar said in the council, it was not necessary that the industrialists who were putting up the case had to take help from the advocate.

“The process to put up the cases in the council has been simplified,” he said.

He said as per the Act, the cases must get solved in a time span of 90 days but it was not happening right now due to various reasons.

He said as per the Act, if the buyer failed to return Rs 50,000 out of Rs 1 lakh, he would have to pay interest to the party concerned along with the pending payment.

GM, DIC, Amarjit Singh, said they made sure that meetings were being held regularly at the council.

Shant Kumar while explaining about the difference between civil courts and the MSME council said: “There is no court fee for recovery of the payments needed in the council.”