By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 16 Dec: The workers and investors of Sahara together protested against SEBI at the Press Club, here, today. According to them, they are linked with Sahara India through some scheme or the other, and have been earning from it for past 25-30 years. But due to the embargo imposed on the entire Group by the Supreme Court over the past eight years owing to the Sahara-SEBI dispute, a situation has arisen leading to delay in payments. This has impacted their earnings in a major way. Investors are not giving new business as their old repayments are delayed. This has led to dwindling of income and, as a result, lakhs are now on the brink of starvation and unemployment.
Over the past 8 years, SEBI has repaid merely Rs 125 crores, with interest, despite taking out 4 rounds of advertisements in regional and national newspapers. In a status report submitted at the beginning of this year to the Supreme Court, SEBI has acknowledged this fact, they claimed. In response to SEBI’s advertisement published on 26 March, 2018, it received repayment applications from 19,598 investors. These came attached with original applications. In response, SEBI repaid only 16,663 applicants, which amounted to, with interest, Rs 125 crores. This indicated that all investors didn’t approach SEBI as they had already received their dues!
The protestors demanded that, with no pending repayment, SEBI ought to submit an affidavit that there are no investors awaiting repayments. This would lead the Supreme Court to lift the embargo placed on all the Sahara companies, with Sahara receiving the Rs 24000 crores (with interest) from the Sahara-SEBI account. This would allow regular repayments to all investors and depositors.