The two national stock exchanges told him that details of disputes relating to investor grievances were time-barred, but he did get brief details of disputes referred to arbitration based on complaints filed by investors. There were 173 such arbitrations filed with the BSE and 367 with the NSE. Further, 59 arbitration awards at the BSE favoured investors and 125 went in their favour at the National Stock Exchange.

In response to another query, Paradkar was told that Sebi had not scrutinised Member Client Agreements by large brokerage houses even though there are innumerable complaints and media reports about one-sided terms and clauses. This is interesting, because investor associations have been pressing Sebi to vet such agreements for well over a year, but the regulator has failed to respond. Interestingly, the appellate authority rejected several of Paradkar’s appeals on the grounds that it would violate commercial confidentiality.

SHCIL siblings

Among the many entities surreptitiously floated by Stock Holding Corporation of India’s (SHCIL) management in the past six month was SHCIL Hannobe Technologies Pvt Ltd, registered at Cochin. The company, it turns out, is owned by a private individual called Boney Sekh, who is a former employee of CrimsonLogic of Singapore with which SHCIL has a technology transfer agreement for the e-stamping project. Boney Sekh had worked at digitising documents for SHCIL, but it is not clear why he has been permitted to use the SHCIL logo on his website or the prefix SHCIL for his company. After all, with public sector institutions holding over 51 per cent of SHCIL shares, the depository company has always enjoyed the status of a government institution and this is now being usurped by a host of unknown entities. Now that the operations of SHCIL have been taken over by a senior official of IDBI Bank, he may want to get answers to some pertinent questions. For instance, why were payments to SHCIL Hannobe routed through SHCIL Projects, another entity spawned by SHCIL in recent months?

... contd.