| The deadline to comply with this is March 31, 2005, which effectively means that from April 1, 2005 onwards investors can make investments of Rs 1 lakh and over only if they have the required MAPIN ID - which includes identification on the basis of physical attributes such as photographs as well as bio-metrics such as fingerprints. |
| Incidentally, there is very little awareness of this circular, with even senior mutual fund officials remaining ignorant of this provision. However, mutual fund industry officials said that they were planning to move Sebi to exempt mutual fund investors against this stipulation. |
| "It will affect sentiments, especially at a time when we are trying to go into mofussil and rural areas to increase our retail reach," a mutual fund head said. |
| Some other senior industry officials said they would at least try to get the deadline extended. Sources said that one way out of this would be to get investors to put in their money in tranches of less than Rs 1 lakh. |
| Bringing retail investors under the MAPIN fold is among the final stages of the entire exercise of giving an unique identification to every investor in the market. Corporates and institutions have to comply with the requirement by the end of this calendar year, that is December 31, 2004. |
| While it was always known that retail investors would be brought under the MAPIN ambit at some point of time, it was always assumed that there was a lot of time left for the entire process, because of the logistics involved in getting so many investors to register. |
| Incidentally, both Sebi and National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) have been fairly low key with regard to the entire exercise and has been little or no publicity to its efforts or to create awareness among the investing public. |
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