Cuttack, Jan. 13: Orissa High Court has admitted a PIL on “mismanagement in recovery of loan” by the Orissa State Financial Corporation (OSFC). The court, however, refused to consider the petitioner’s plea for a CBI probe into it.

Chinmay Kumar Prusty, a 28-year-old resident of Chandikhol area in Jajpur district, had filed the petition expressing concern that OSFC was being pushed towards insolvency due to alleged non-adherence to norms regarding recovery of loan.

“After a preliminary hearing, the two-judge bench of chief justice V. Gopal Gowda and justice B.N. Mohapatra admitted the petition on Wednesday and issued notice to the state government,” petitioner counsel Prabodha Chandra Nayak said.

“But the bench directed for deleting of the prayer seeking a CBI probe into the issue,” Nayak said. Interestingly, the petition, without any documents as annexure, had relied on observations given by the high court in a judgment in 2009 after finding a petitioner to be a defaulter who had taken a loan from the OSFC in 1982 but had subsequently not deposited a single pie and alleged arbitrariness and unfairness by the corporation.

The portion of the judgment cited said: “The corporation, for reasons best known to it, could not wake up from its deep slumber and no attempt had ever been made to make recovery. This reveals very sorry state of affairs as to how public financial institutions are being mismanaged.”

“This is a case where interference can be drawn on collusion of the officers of the corporation with the loanee,” the judgment had observed, while directing the chief secretary for appropriate action.