MUMBAI: Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued legal notices to PTC India and its financial services unit PTC India Financial Services (PFS), seeking clarifications about alleged corporate governance lapses. The Sebi investigation comes after the allegations levelled by three independent directors of PTC India Financial Services in January 2022.
The three directors had resigned from the board citing instances of serious lapses in corporate governance and that the company failed to act on concerns raised by them.
The capital market regulator will pass a final order after getting responses from the companies. PTC India, a power trading company, and PTC India Financial Services, a finance company, have to reply to the show cause notice within three weeks.
In January 2022, PFS came into the news after three of its independent directors resigned from the board alleging serious corporate governance issues. Subsequently, PFS was directed by the SEBI to first address the corporate governance issues at the firm and was barred from reporting quarterly results till they address these issues.
In December last year, four out of the six non-executive independent directors on the board of PTC India resigned citing concerns over governance issues. As per the BSE filing, Sushama Nath, Jayant Purushottam Gokhale and Subhash S Mundra resigned as independent directors from the company’s board with effect from December 5, while non-executive independent director, Preeti Saran resigned from the post with effect from December 6.
In his resignation letter, Gokhale had accused the management of creating hurdles against the smooth working of the board while refusing to acknowledge any deficiency in the running of the business.