The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued a directive (which will become effective from August 01, 2018) facilitating the investors to submit their complaints through SEBI Complaints Redress System (SCORES) platform directly to the listed companies with the objective to ensure speedy disposal of investor complaints.

SCORES is a web based centralized system introduced in June 2011, with the intent to establish a contrivance for the benefit of the investors to submit their complaints against listed companies and registered intermediaries.

The directive is the reflection of the representations received by SEBI from listed companies and registered intermediaries that investors’ complaints can be resolved at brisk phase by bringing the complaints directly to the attention of listed companies/registered intermediaries respectively.

As per the process, the investor has to lodge the complaint with concerned listed entity with all relevant details – the listed company is obligated to resolve the complaint within 30 days of the receipt of the complaint.

Investor may submit the complaint to the listed company via SCORES functionality. Upon the registration of the complaint, SCORES shall forward the complaint to the listed entity (against whom the complaint is registered) for resolution.

If the listed company fails to resolve the complaint within specified time duration then the complaint will be registered with SCORES.

As per the procedure the investor (who lodges complaint with SCORES) is mandated to register a user account with SCORES and utilize the SCORES functionality to register the complaint.

Investor is permitted to register complaint on SCORES within 3 years from the date of cause of complaint, in case of (i) concerned Listed Company/ registered intermediary rejects the investor’s compliant, or (ii) Listed Company/ registered intermediary fails to communicate or ignore to respond to the investor complaint, or (iii) response received from/redressal action taken by the Listed Company/ registered intermediary is not satisfactory to the investor.

One can hope that with the serious implementation of latest directive in relation to investor’s grievance will aid in speedy disposal of the investor complaints – save a lot of time, money and energy for all the stakeholders involved – most importantly justice may be served at a faster pace.

Research inputs by Paruchuri Baswanth Mohan

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About the Author:

Bhumesh Verma is a lawyer with over 2 decades of experience in advising domestic and international clients on corporate transactions (M&A, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Startups, corporate advisory, etc.) and features in “The A-List – India’s Top 100 Lawyers” by India Business Law Journal. He keeps writing frequently on FDI, M&A and other corporate matters and is a guest faculty as well. He can be reached at [email protected]