The Bombay High Court on Wednesday confirmed that the Committee set up by it to deal with the defaulters of NSEL has powers to collect and verify the information provided by the members and clients of the exchange.

The High Court appointed Committee had submitted a report on the developments in the case and sought clarification from the Court on its power to collect information from the trading members and clients. Defaulters including Modern India, investor and broker forums argued that the Committee does not have jurisdiction to call for information to collate the data from 13,000 trading clients and the focus of the Committee was only to ascertain the amounts due and payable by the defaulting members and their clients and work out a mutual settlement between defaulting members and NSEL.

In January, following the Committee order NSEL had issued circular seeking information from trading members and their clients to provide KYC establishing their claims. The exchange has sought details such a PAN, full name, address, email Id and active bank account along with their source of funding.

Investors and brokers felt that the exchange has no authority to seek such sensitive information on source of funding and income tax filing. At last count, the exchange received claim verification from 1,938 investors registered their dues amounting to `550 crore. This was in sharp variation to the claim of about 13,000 investors suppose to have lost `5,600 crore.

Last month, the exchange sought brokers to give proof of payment of `179 crore made to clients a few months after the scam broke out in 2013. Of the 200 brokers, who were involved in the distribution of money, only 133 responded to the exchange’s call and provided proof for payment of `92 crore.

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