Now Reading: Sanyal: ₹1 lakh crore stuck in govt fund, fix cut wait time
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Sanyal: ₹1 lakh crore stuck in govt fund, fix cut wait time
Nearly ₹1 lakh crore in unclaimed shares and dividends was stuck in the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), with claimants needing 25 steps across three non-communicating portals. Sanjeev Sanyal, a member…
The Story in Brief
Nearly ₹1 lakh crore in unclaimed shares and dividends was stuck in the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), with claimants needing 25 steps across three non-communicating portals. Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the PM's Economic Advisory Council, said his team unified the portals using APIs and cut the process to 14 steps. Monthly approvals surged from 900 in August 2025 to 14,500 in March 2026. Share transfers also more than doubled after the September 2025 reform.
Sanyal also outlined a reform for voluntary company liquidation. A centralised portal, CPACE, cut the average time from 500 days to 60 days, an 88% reduction. He said 80-90% of company closures are routine decisions, not bankruptcies, but the earlier process took years even with no objections.
The Indian Opinion
The IEPF fix is held up as a reform triumph, but the real story is how bad the old system was. Portals that could not talk to each other despite holding citizens' money are not a minor glitch; they are a governance failure that forced people to pay 20% to middlemen. We should not applaud the cure until we ask why the disease was allowed to fester for years. Watch how quickly the remaining backlog of claims is cleared: that will tell us if the fix is permanent or just a one-time surge.
Source: thehindu.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
