Complaints on Sahara, SEBI top grievances to govt

New Delhi: Unfair judgement awards by stock exchanges and market regulator SEBI and no refunds from scam cases like Sahara top the list of complaints received by the Centre, a government instituted study has said.

The pan-ministry study found that the bulk of the grievances related to the Department of Economic Affairs were on the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) scam and significant losses due to the levy of Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT).

The study was conducted by the Quality Council of India for the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, following recommendations of a Parliamentary committee.

It involved identification of top grievance categories and recommendation of systemic reforms.

"For the Department of Economic Affairs, the top most issue for the ministry revolved around investor woes concerned with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Commodity Markets issue, refund of scams and employee grievances, accounting for 25 per cent, 18 per cent,17 per cent and 8 per cent of the grievances," said the study, presented recently to Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh.

The study also cited "non-receipt of shares, dividend pay-outs or bonus shares", "unfair judgement awards by the stock exchanges and SEBI", "unauthorised and unlawful transaction by the brokers as trading members" and "unsatisfactory grievance redressal" as issues causing grievances with the market regulator. "No refund has been received in scam cases like Sahara Ltd," the report said, highlighting "refunds of scams" as a major grievance causing issue.

The Department of Economic Affairs received 9,553 complaints from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2016. The study focused on the period from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016, when 2,076 complaints were received. For its analysis, it used a sample size of 250 cases.

The Sahara case deals with alleged irregularities in raising over Rs 24,000 crore from more than three crore investors.

The NSEL -- which is now defunct -- suspended trading on July 31, 2013 after a major payment crisis broke out at the bourse. Subsequently, a number of regulators and enforcement agencies launched probes into the NSEL matter.

The CTT is levied on transactions done on the domestic commodity derivatives exchange. The study also suggested certain priority systemic reforms to check grievances.