FRANKLIN MOVES GUJARAT HC TO VACATE STAY ON E-VOTING PROCESS

MUMBAI: Franklin Templeton India on Friday filed a petition before the Gujarat high court urging it to vacate the stay on the company’s e-voting process involving Franklin’s unitholders, which is required to monetize the underlying assets of the six shuttered debt schemes.

If the stay is not vacated “it will cause grave harm and prejudice to the more than 300,000 unitholders of the schemes, including small/retail investors in these schemes as the process of returning the money to these numerous investors will be delayed”, Franklin said in its plea. Mint has reviewed a copy of the petition.

The matter will be heard on Monday. Investors will be deprived of an expeditious return of their investments, said asset management company (AMC).

On May 28, Franklin had issued e-voting notices seeking unitholders’ authorisation to monetise the underlying securities set aside. E-voting notices were issued to 300,000 investors who invested in the six debt schemes. The e-voting to authorise either the trustees of Franklin or Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP to monetise the assets was scheduled for June 9-12.

This e-voting process was stayed till June 12 by the high court on a petition by Rasna promoters that the winding up decision was taken without the consent of the unitholders.

The AMC argued that the petition was not a writ and, therefore, was not maintainable, as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is the nodal agency and the market regulator to consider complaints of investors.

Sebi has ordered a forensic audit of the matter. Once that is completed it will decide upon the next course of action.“The original petitioners cannot ask this court to conduct a parallel enquiry in respect of the same set of allegations,” Franklin said.