Society wants accounts de-freezed

The scam-hit Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society on Friday rejected the proposal of finding a middle path, through which it could be allowed to withdraw amounts for clearing statutory dues from its bank accounts, frozen by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Instead, it wants its accounts to be entirely de-freezed.

The scam-hit Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society on Friday rejected the proposal of finding a middle path, through which it could be allowed to withdraw amounts for clearing statutory dues from its bank accounts, frozen by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Instead, it wants its accounts to be entirely de-freezed.

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“I don’t mind the high court monitoring our expenditure, but we certainly can’t accept censorship by the CBI,” VA Thorat, counsel for the housing society, told the Bombay high court on Friday.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the controversial housing society, challenging the freezing of its accounts with the Cuffe Parade and Wodehouse Road branches of the State Bank of India. A division bench of justice Ranjana Desai and justice RV More has now said that the petition will be heard next on July 12.

Instead, the senior advocate insisted that the housing society being a legal entity had a fundamental right to operate its own bank accounts and utilise the money deposited. Thorat argued that freezing of the society’s bank accounts was unfair, as the society had the fundamental right to defend itself in various litigations, for which it needed to pay its lawyers.

The counsel said that the society couldn’t be deprived of operating its own bank accounts, just because some of its members have been accused of various criminal offences. “The housing society, or the bank accounts, are nowhere implicated in the FIR lodged by the CBI,” Thorat argued.

He also pointed out that Maharashtra government was hotly contesting the title of the land at Cuffe Parade, on which the high-rise building of the society has been constructed, before the inquiry commission appointed by the state government.

Additional solicitor general Darius Khambata, on the other hand, said that even with frozen bank accounts, the society had picked the finest lawyers to represent itself before various courts.