New Delhi, Aug 12 : The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre, RBI and others on a petition filed of journalist Sucheta Dalal in relation to unclaimed funds of depositors and investors, which was seized by various regulators and is not accessible to the legal heirs to the rightful estate.Dalal was represented by lawyer Prashant Bhushan in the Apex Court.
After hearing the arguments, a bench consisting of Justices Abdul Nazeer and J.K.Maheshwari issued a notice of Dalal’s plea.
It also addressed issues related to the necessity of a centralised data website that is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that will provide the basic information of the bank accounts of deceased holders, and the necessity of making the procedure of making claims for funds in dormant or inactive accounts by legal heirs or nominees’ easy.
The plea asked the top court to issue directives to ensure that funds not claimed of the public, which are transferred to government-owned funds, such as.the Depositor’s Educational and Awareness Fund (DEAF), Investor’s Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) and Senior Citizen’s Welfare Fund (SCWF) due to the fact that they were not claimed by legal heirs/nominees of the deceased, are made accessible to legal heirs/nominees, by providing details of holders of dormant or inactive accounts to an online database centralised.
“It is claimed that the Depositors Education and Awareness Fund (DEAF) was worth the amount of 39,264.25 crore as of the end of March 2021, an increase from the previous figure of Rs 33,114 crore at 31 March 2020, and an impressive increase from 18,381 crore at the close of March 2019.Additionally, the amount in the IEPF with the IEPF was initially 400 crore in 1999, was 10 times greater in the amount of Rs 4,100 crore by the end of March 2020.” was the statement in the appeal.
The plea said that the details of deceased investors who’s deposits, debentures dividends, insurance, post office funds as well as post office funds.have been transferred to IEPF and is not accessible on the web site of IEPF.
“The IEPF authority publishes the name of the individuals who have transferred money to the fund.The information is posted on the IEPF website.
However, a number of technical issues occur when the website is visited.In the end, customers have to find middlemen to receive their refunds” they said.
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