Knitwear exporters who have been waging a legal battle against banks for the last eight years to get justice in forex derivatives scam which resulted in they losing about Rs. 300 crore, are yet to get the attention of any political parties.
Each time when elections are declared, political parties could be seen competing each other with promises of getting more grants allocated to dyeing units for treatment of effluents even though Supreme Court has stated that ‘polluters pay’ as far as on the matter of pollution caused by Tirupur dyeing units in River Noyyal. But at the same time, the parties are silent on their support to help the knitwear industry on derivatives issue despite the fact the Reserve Bank of India itself had confirmed that the banks sold ‘unsuitable derivative products’ to exporters, who purchased them to offset foreign exchange fluctuations in 2007-08 fiscal. The apex bank had later imposed a fine on 19 banks for selling those products.
“Our plea for long has been to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to expedite the investigation. The government should support our case pending in Supreme Court to vacate the stay on CBI inquiry into the derivatives scam,” said Raja M. Shanmugam, an apparel exporter and president of Forex Derivative Consumers Forum.
According to S. Dhananjayan, advisor to the forum, the affected exporters have met many political party leaders on the matter but no one has taken it up in their election manifesto till now.
Another exporter said that only those projects where the grants allocation is necessitated were usually taken up by majority of political parties in the election campaigns so that they could project the same as achievements in the subsequent campaigns.
