Big Relief: Sahara Credit Co-op asked to return money within 90 days

The court of Central Registrar has asked the Sahara Credit Cooperative Society to submit the detail of assets and liabilities of the society along with a credible plan for returning money to depositors within a period of 90 days.

The hearing in the court of Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies which took place through Video Conferencing recently asked the counsel of Sahara to make a complete assessment of all amounts due to the depositors up to 31.3.2021.

The order sheet reads, “Society shall place an accounting team at the disposal of learned counsel for making a complete assessment of all amounts due to the depositors up to 31.3.2021. The current realisation value of all the investments made shall also be assessed and presented along with the aforementioned details. It may also be examined as to how much can be the income from interest dividend from the investments of the society in case liquidation of assets is not possible in the short term”, its reads.

“On the basis of the complete financial assessment of the society, learned counsel of the society shall also present a credible working plan for the society. Learned counsel for the society is permitted to submit an interim report, in case the full report is not ready at the next date of hearing but in any case, the report must be submitted within a period of 90 days from today”, according to the order sheet.

Sahara Counsel submitted that there is a case pending with the apex court under which an amount of approximately Rs 22k crore was deposited in the Sahara depositors’ account held with SEBI. There is a possibility that a large portion of this amount will be refunded to the group which can be brought into the society for repayment of the depositors.

Sahara failed to answer on the amount that has been diverted from the society’s funds to the account in SEBI. Its counsel expressed his inability to throw any light as the details were not available with him.

Besides, the interim prohibition order on taking deposits from the existing or new members as well as renewal of deposits shall continue to be in force till further orders.

During the hearing, D.K. Srivastava, Chairman, Sahara Credit Cooperative Society, Lucknow and S.B. Upadhyay, Senior Advocate along with Nishant Kumar Advocate for Sahara Credit Cooperative Society were present.

The next hearing on the matter is fixed on 23 December 2020 at 3:00 PM.

It bears recall that hundreds of victims of Sahara Co-ops have written to everybody from PM to CMs to RoCs for relief for many months now. Even Indian Cooperative desk is flooded by dozens of emails every day.