In Sahara saga, small investors find a new hope Premium

Ahead of the 2024 general elections, the government’s initiative is expected to forge a connect with middle-class voters who have invested in four Sahara-linked cooperatives

Soon after a new Ministry to look after the cooperative sector was formed in 2021, the corridors of its old offices at Krishi Bhavan in Delhi’s Central Secretariat were filled with thousands of letters and postcards. Many handwritten, they had to be stuffed into gunny bags. All had the same request: a refund from the Sahara group, the business conglomerate mired in financial embezzlement, and currently being investigated by multiple agencies including the Enforcement Directorate (ED) since 2008. The group raised ₹80,000 crore from 2.76 crore small time investors across 26 States.

On July 18, the Central government set up the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies (CRCS) portal — mocrefund.crcs.gov.in — for small investors in Sahara companies to get a maximum refund of ₹10,000 per investor, irrespective of the total amount invested. Until 7.30 a.m. on July 29, up to 15.28 lakh investors had registered.

“The idea is to return at least ₹10,000 to everyone from a ₹5,000 crore corpus [from the corpus of the Sahara-SEBI Refund Account that the Supreme Court allowed the ministry to access on March 29 this year]. There are 2.76 crore investors and at this rate we need ₹27,000 crore. Some have invested ₹7,000 and others, lakhs of rupees,” said the official from the Ministry of Cooperation. For the rest of the amount, the ministry will approach the Supreme Court again.

“The total number of verified applicants are 4.21 lakh and 12.26 lakh claims worth ₹3,182.67 crore have already been generated. These will be refunded in a maximum of 45 days,” the official added.

To weed out any irregularities, “The data dump has been digitised. The portal has five layers of checks. An investor can register only through their Aadhaar-linked mobile phone. The bank account linked to Aadhaar will appear on the screen. A token number will be generated and sent to Sahara. Once they verify, the CRCS will also run a check. There is an auditor and four retired bureaucrats to oversee the portal,” the official said.

Investors will have to scan and upload documents, and give an undertaking that the claims are true. If the information is found to be false, legal action will be initiated. Claims will be processed only through the portal and no physical documents will be entertained.

“The Common Service Centres in villages and rural areas have been asked to help rural investors who do not have access to computers and scanners,” the official said.