Click to play videoNew Delhi: Popular non-banking company, the Sahara Group has got a court stay order on an RBI directive that it must return investments made by the public. The company has 60 lakh investors and deposits worth Rs 20,000 crore.
Even though the Group has managed to get a stay order on the RBI directive restricting its financial operations, the Mayawati government says investors might be taken for a ride.
All of Sahara's investors are tense as they have deposited their hard earned money with the group, but now are uncertain about its fate.
"I had saved Rs 20 everyday for so long and then deposited it thinking the money would come in use at the time of my daughter's wedding," says a distraught investor.
Another investor says, "I have Rs 1 lakh in the fixed deposit with the company but from the last month I've not been getting any returns on it."
"I would've got more than Rs 15,000 on March 9, but I'll have to go to the court to ask for justice," adds a third investor.
On Wednesday, the RBI imposed restrictions asking the parent company Sahara India Parivar to return the money of all of its depositors. And on Thursday afternoon Sahara India Parivar's chairman Subroto Roy got a stay order against the RBI directive.
"A blanket ban on the deposits was not in the interest of either the depositors or the employees of the company, therefore in the general interest of the depositors and the employees the honourable High Court has stayed the directive dated June 4 2008," states Sahara Group lawyer, Piyush Agarwal.
For Subroto Roy — who is known to be very close to UP's former chief minister Mulayam Singh — the RBI order has come as a big blow.
And with the Mayawati government also shooting off a harsh letter to the RBI, more trouble is certainly in store for the Group.
On Thursday the UP Chief Secretary wrote a letter to the RBI asking for stringent action against the Sahara Group as they might sell of their assets and not return the investors their money.
The letter said: The only direction is to repay the deposits as and when they mature. It does not even prohibit SIFCL from alienating its assets which the RBI is empowered by section 45 MB (2). In absence of such a prohibition depositors will have serious apprehensions about possible alienation of the assets jeopardising the security of their deposits.
With Mayawati looking for opportunities to settle scores with her arch rivals, Subroto Roy will certainly have to be very careful about his next move.
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