 "Pending investor complaints against listed cos fall sharply")
With Sebi's web-based system ensuring efficient redressal of investor complaints, the number of pending grievances came down sharply to 5,736 at the end of last financial year.
According to the latest data compiled by the markets regulator, the cumulative number of pending investor grievances against market entities at the end of March 2015 stood at 5,736 as against 9,147 a year ago.
Pending complaints stood at 49,113 at the end of 2008-09, and dipped to 37,880 at the end of the following fiscal.
The numbers fell further to 28,653 in 2010-11 and to 23,725 in 2011-12.
Faster resolution of grievances can be attributed to implementation of Sebi's web-based investor complaint redressal system, SCORES, in June 2011. The system has helped bring down the number of pending complaints significantly.
A survey conducted by the markets regulator for the period 2014-15 found that around 53% of the grievances were resolved within 90 days.
Further, it showed that 83% of the investors did not face any difficulty in filing a complaint on SCORES.
"The SCORES system has been working satisfactorily and has helped in making the complaint handling and redressal mechanism more efficient," Sebi said.
The markets regulator received 38,442 investor complaints against market entities in 2014-15 as compared to 33,550 in the preceding fiscal year.
At the same time, Sebi resolved 35,090 complaints in the last fiscal.
SCORES provides a centralised database of all complaints, online movement of complaints to the concerned listed companies and online upload of action taken reports (ATRs) by the concerned firms.
It also helps investors view, track and follow up the actions taken on their grievance.
During 2014-15, more than 23,000 e-complaints were received as against 18,811 in the previous fiscal.
Meanwhile, in 2014-15, Sebi had imposed a penalty of Rs 34.25 lakh against 17 entities through adjudication proceedings for failure to redress investor grievances.
Besides, regulatory actions were initiated against 620 entities in the last fiscal for the same.
