MPS GET UNIQUE CALL CENTRE TO ANSWER THEIR QUERIES 24/7

NEWDELHI: Thephonesarebuzzing at a new, unique call centre for membersofParliament,aninitiative of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who believes this will improve the efficiency of lawmakers who have to juggle their parliamentary responsibilities withmanagingtheirconstituencies.

The 24/7 call centre, named InformationandCommunication Centre, will assist MPs on all aspects — from administrative (findingoutthestatusof pending travelbills) tofunctional(providingbackgroundresearchonkey issues). The call centre, which started as a pilot last month, has been given a dedicated room (no 13) in the Parliament House annex and at least three officials have been deployed to man it for now, a senior official at the Lok SabhasecretariatsaidonFriday.

Apartfromachiefcoordinator and a few coordinators, the call centre also has temporary nodal officers who are part of a WhatsAppgroup,asexplainedinaletter written by joint secretary of Member Service Branch Abha Singh Yaduvanshi.

MUMBAI: The economic offences wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police submittedachargesheetof32,959 pagestothemetropolitanmagistrate court on Friday, in the case of the ₹6,670-crore fraud at Punjab Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank.

The charge sheet has statementsof340witnesses,including 90 depositors and 10 PMC Bank employees. This is the biggest banking fraud case of 2019.

Thechargesheethasidentified the key accused as Rakesh Kumar and Sarang Wadhawan, promoters of Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL); former managing director of PMC Bank, Joy

Thomas; Waryam Singh former chairmanofPMCBank;andSurjeetSinghArora,formerdirector of PMC Bank. All five were arrested in October. A charge sheet against the seven other arrestedaccusedisexpectedtobe filedwithinthenexttwomonths.

Joint commissioner of police, EOW, Rajvardhan Sinha said, “We have added sections 477 A (falsificationofaccounts)and201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) in the charge sheet.”

Initially, the accused were bookedforcheating,forgeryand criminal conspiracy on a complaint by Jasbir Singh Matta,47, who was authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).