Domestic insurance behemoth can heave a sigh of relief, as Wipro ‘enemy property’ shares that it had bought in 2019 from the Centre turned positive in Wednesday’s rally.

Last year in April, the Centre had offloaded about 4.44 crore Wipro shares through block deals. Of that, Life Insurance Corporation of India bought 3.86 crore shares at an average price of ₹258.9, and thus helped the Government mop up ₹1,149.5 crore. Shares of Wipro, post Q1 results, surged 17.4 per cent to ₹264.25.

Currently, LIC holds 26.81 crore shares or 4.69 per cent stake in Wipro.

The stock, which dipped to sub-₹260 level in August 2019, further crashed to a low of ₹159.40 during March 2020. However, since then Wipro had a secular rally and on Wednesday it regained ₹260-level.

The Centre had identified constituted a high-level committee in 2019 to recommend the quantum and price or price band for sale of ‘enemy shares’ worth ₹3,000 crore. The Government then revealed enemy property consists of about 6.5 crore shares which are under the Custodian of Enemy Property for India (CEPI) belonging to 20,323 shareholders in 996 companies.

Of these, 588 companies were functional and 139 are listed on the stock exchanges, it had then said. Wipro was one among them. Besides Wipro, the Centre had also sold ₹779 crore worth of such shares in 2018-19 but did not reveal the details about the company or companies.

According to the Enemy Property Act, 1968, ‘enemy property’ refers to any property — both movable and immovable properties such as securities, jewellery, land and buildings — that belonged to a person who migrated from India to an enemy country when a war broke out. After the war with China and Pakistan in 1962 and 1965, the government took over the properties, under the Defence of India Act, from persons who migrated to these countries.

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