CRCS Sahara Refund Portal: In a major relief to Sahara depositors, Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday launched the ‘CRCS-Sahara Refund Portal’. According to a top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, the portal has been launched with an aim to return the hard-earned money of crores of depositors of the four cooperative societies of the Sahara group in about 45 days. “After registration of depositors on ‘Sahara Refund Portal’ and verification of documents, the amount will be directly transferred to their bank account,” Shah said on Twitter.
Depositors will get refund in 45 days
Calling it a historic moment, he said it is the first time depositors are getting refunds in a case where multiple government agencies are involved and each has made seizures. Shah assured the depositors that now no one can stop their money and they will get refund in 45 days after registering on the portal. Shah tweeted, “The Modi government has started the process of returning the money of investors stuck in four co-operative societies of Sahara. This will bring back people’s trust in co-operative societies.”
Money will be returned to 10 crore investors
On March 29, the government had said that the money would be returned to the 10 crore investors of the four cooperative societies within 9 months. The announcement came after the Supreme Court ordered transfer of Rs 5,000 crore from the Sahara-SEBI refund account to the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies (CRCS).
Depositors will get refund up to Rs 10,000
He said that initially, depositors would get a refund of up to Rs 10,000 and later the amount would be increased for those who have invested a higher amount. He said the Rs 5,000 crore corpus would be able to take care of the needs of 1.7 crore depositors in the first phase.
About 2.5 crore people have deposits up to Rs 30,000 in four cooperative societies, Sahara Credit Cooperative Society Ltd., Saharayan Universal Multipurpose Society Ltd., Hamara India Credit Cooperative Society Ltd. and Stars Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd.
“Once Rs 5,000 crore is utilised, we will approach the Supreme Court and request them to release more funds so that the total refund of other depositors with higher amount can be processed,” Shah said. The portal has been developed by a subsidiary of IFCI for submission of valid claims by the depositors of these co-operative societies.
Requirements to apply
Shah said there are two important requirements: Aadhaar registration with the mobile and Aadhaar-linking with the bank account where the refund is to be deposited. He said, in this endeavour, the Common Services Center would also help and guide the depositors for online registration on the portal for refund.
The Ministry had filed an application in the Supreme Court to address the grievances of the members/depositors. In March, the Supreme Court had directed that Rs 5,000 crore from the ‘Sahara-SEBI refund account’ be transferred to CRCS for payment of legitimate dues to depositors.
(With inputs from PTI)