The order was passed by a bench comprising Justices U K Dhawan and Shabihul Hasnain on a petition filed by Sahara. The bench observed that the RBI ban be stayed in the interest of small investors.
The stay will be in place till the next hearing scheduled for the last week of July. A Sahara spokesperson, however, refused to comment on whether the residuary non-banking finance company (NBFC) intends to restart accepting deposits from Friday.
While RBI was represented by senior counsel S K Kalia, Prashant Chandra argued Sahara's case. The court also issued a notice to the Centre in the matter.
On Wednesday evening, the regulator, to "protect the interests of depositors and in public interest", had barred Sahara from raising fresh deposits and renewing the maturity of funds it had already mopped up from 42.5 million depositors.
RBI had said that the violations related to maintenance of directed investments, payment of minimum interest rate, asset-liability management guidelines and know-your-customer (KYC) norms stipulated for opening of deposit accounts and the details on the agents of the company deployed for deposit mobilisation.
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Another violation pertained to intimating depositors about maturity of their deposits and repayment.
Sahara had issued a statement last evening saying that it intended to challenge the ban. Last year, RBI had decided to bar Sahara and Peerless from accessing fresh public deposits from March 2010 but decided to impose an immediate ban on the Lucknow-headquartered company following a show-cause notice.
On his part, Peerless General Finance & Investment Co Ltd Managing Director S K Roy said the company did not receive any instructions from the regulator to stop accepting public deposits.
The Kolkata-based company had stopped accepting public deposits temporarily but resumed the activity soon. "We found a lot of people were interested in keeping deposits with us when we stopped accepting the deposits for a while. So, as of now, we are continuing to accept deposits," he said. Peerless has around 45 million depositors across the country with total deposits of over Rs 5,000 crore.
"All the deposits are invested as per RBI's guidelines in government securities and other approved investments," he told Business Standard.
While Sahara's deposit base is estimated at over Rs 10,000 crore, the company did not disclose the details of the funds it has mopped up or its investment details, saying that its executives were busy with the court case.