Thread by @barandbench

Supreme Court bench of Justices Abdul Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna hears issues related to objection to the e-voting process for winding up Franklin Templeton's six mutual fund schemes and distribution of money to the unitholders. 
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Advocate Puneet Jain argues for investors: What they are saying is decision of unitholder is approved but said under Article 226 HC said it cannot get into veracity of the decision. They are asking for a modification of an individual contract.

Jain: If a person does not agree then relationship with Trustees continue which is pay on demand.

Justice Khanna: There is a difference between modification and winding up. You can say winding up in case like this amounts to winding up but it is stretching too far.

Justice Khanna: if something cannot be done legally then 99.99% consent will also not make difference

Justice Khanna: Money has to be collected for winding up. It will not come from the air.

Jain: People who agree will be a part of winding up and else they won't be

Advocate Jain: In equity this process will be different. These are debt funds and hence the process is different.

Adv Jain: There are instances of asking votes from same IP address. This is about 29,133 votes. Source or public IP address becomes the identity of the voter.

Justice Khanna: Do you want payment or no payment ? tell me that ?

Justice Khanna: You have not given consent to the scheme. You are contradicting yourself. So I take it that you don't want your money

Jain: I am on the legal ground

Justice Khanna: e voting is for winding up. No vote is against it.

Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora appears for Chennai Financial markets

Arora: K Fintech was appointed to provide technical assistance for the e voting process. This entity had stringent action from SEBI itself in the recent past.

Justice Khanna: This order is against Karvy stockbroking and not Karvy Fintech though it may be a group company. So are you saying that one wrong done by another is also for the other one

Arora: SEBI should go for someone with more credibility

Arora: Resolution 18 requires majority unitholders to vote

Justice Khanna: 18 uses the term consent and it does not have the term majority

Arora: I say majority of trustee

Arora: When there is a closed scrutiny and SEBI had issued notice to Franklin Templeton. In those circumstances would it not be prudent on part of SEBI that there was no apprehension with the evoting process and the credibility. The FSL report erodes the credibility further

Arora: J Sagar, the observer says since he has no expertise he has accepted the K Fintech report

Arora: Observer says they are clearly working on reports by K Fintech etc and that no independent probe has been carried out. This is so because they have no technical expertise.

Arora: Postal ballot would have given opportunity to take informed decisions. 30 day period would have been in the interest of the unitholders.

Arora: voting process was managed by a nudge process. Observer should have objected to the sophisticated manipulation of voting. Observers did not have the expertise..

Justice Khanna: @SEBI_India was very clear that they did not want to oversee this and thus we appointed the observer.

Arora: When you put a responsibility in SEBI to appoint an observer they have the expertise to know what is needed to protect the interest of investors

Justice Khanna: The mutual fund is one issue. The evoting is the second aspect and we are concerned with that.

Arora: I verily believe that the first aspect will have a huge bearing on the second issue

SC: We are only on e voting

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