JVLR woes!!

When the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) was being constructed, MMRDA told us that after the JVLR is built, travel from Eastern Express Highway (EEH) to Western Express Highway (WEH) will be in 20 minutes, that's right 20 minutes flat with no stoppages whatsoever!! Bullshit!! Today it takes anything from 1 hour to 2 hours to just traverse this link road connecting the eastern suburbs of Mumbai to the western suburbs. Still the Powai section of this road is bearable. It is when you cross the SEEPZ flyover that you run into humongous traffic jam, all the way to the WEH. It just simply stops, crawls, stops, sputters, stops. There are so many traffic signals, so many criss crosses that one simply gets bored at this stretch. Nowadays it seem the Aarey road has been blocked ostensibly for a fallen bridge during the August 29 downpour, but who knows what is the real reason ? It doesn't take that much time for repair of a bridge. 

Secretarial standard on General meetings

Salient features of Revised Secretarial Standards for General Meetings – SS2

1)     Applies to a section 8 company also but all other provisions of the Act relating to the General meetings are still applicable to a section 8 company;

2)    In case of a nidhi company, general meeting notice need to be served individually only on members holding shares of face value of more than Rs.1000 or more than 1% of the paid up share capital of the company, whichever is less. For other members, notice is by way of a newspaper notice in a newspaper circulated in the place where registered office is situated and on the notice board of the company;

3)     In case of companies having a website, the notice shall simultaneously be hosted on the website till the conclusion of the meeting. In case of a private company, the notice shall be hosted on the website of the company, if any, unless otherwise provided in the articles. This is an additional compliance even for small private companies which have websites. Nowadays every small company has a website for its promotion etc. The word used here is “shall” instead of “may” so this mandates compliance by all companies having websites. This is an unnecessary burden on the private companies to comply with this requirement. The only alternative they have is to amend the articles to provide that the notice need not be hosted on the website of the company. 

4)    Route map of AGM is not necessary for a closely held private company, where only the Directors and their family members are the shareholders or a wholly owned subsidiary company. This is a welcome relief for the small private companies. The whole purpose of putting route map in the notice was infructuous.

5)    Notice of the annual general meeting shall also specify the serial number of the meeting. By serial number I am assuming the no. of annual general meetings held in a company since its inception.

6)   Consent for shorter notice for the general meeting can be received any time before the meeting commences. It means that consent can be received 10 minutes before the meeting starts also. Government is toting this as “ease of doing business” 

7)   The authority letter from corporates for the annual general meeting shall,

(a)          in case of remote e-voting, be received before close of e-voting;

(b)          in case of postal ballot, shall be received alongwith the postal ballot form; and

(c)          if he is attending the meeting, then the letter should be sent before the commencement of the meeting.

8)   Nidhi companies are not required to provide e-voting facilities to their members;

9)   In case of Nidhi, no member shall exercise voting rights on a poll in excess of 5% of the total voting rights of the equity shareholders;

10)In case of a private company, a member who is a related party is entitled to vote on such resolution. This was always the case under the earlier Companies Act, 1956 also, only it has now been codified in the Standards.

11) The results of the voting at the general meeting needs to be displayed for at least three days at the notice board of the company at its registered office and also its Head Office and Corporate Office wherever it is situated. This is over and above displaying of the results at the company’s website, if any.  Before amendment, the three days’ time limit was not specified. This is another example of compliance overreach.

12) At a poll at the general meeting, it is not necessary that one of the scrutinizer shall be the member of the company.

13) Minutes of the meeting can be maintained in electronic form and it need not have a timestamp.

14) Minutes if they are maintained in loose leaf form, shall be bound periodically, at least once in every three years.

15) Minutes Book shall be kept only at the registered office of the company, not at any other place.

16) No need for minutes to state the conclusion time of the meeting;

17) Most of the other amendments are either rectification of the drafting errors or aligning the standards to be in line with the Act and/ or Rules thereof.

Brought in Dead

Written by Jack Higgins, but originally published under the name of Harry Peterson, this Nick Miller series features an apparent suicide by a young girl who has gone to great lengths to conceal her identity. When Nick and his colleague Brady finally identify her, she is Joanne Craig, a gifted painter and daughter of Colonel Duncan Craig. Joanne is a quiet, well mannered dutiful girl but changes completely upon coming into contact with one Max Vernon a rich thug & drug dealer. Under Vernon, Joanne becomes a drug addict herself, becomes pregnant and when Vernon throws her out, she goes and commits suicide. The judge and jury let of Max Vernon on no evidence basis. But the father who is an ex-military operative and an electrical engineer to boot, seeks revenge for the death of his daughter. There is a nice cat and mouse game being played between Max, Nick and Craig, with Craig using his intelligence to kill one of his Vernon's agents after another.

Jack Higgins, whose real name is Harry Peterson, is of course a well known author for his fast paced crime thrillers. This is my second book of him, first one being "The Last Place God Made"  

A Deadly Shade of Gold

My first one of the Travis McGee series by John MacDonald, the plot twists and turns literally into so many parts that you begin to wonder where this character came from. McGee is drawn into a murder of his close friend, who himself is drawn into some shady dealings with some pure gold Aztec statuette that have some value. McGee sets off on a quest to find out who killed his friend which takes him into a small village in Mexico. The plot slowly unravels every time McGee visits a new adventure, we start learning something about the story. Still it is not a linear narrative so we start tucking into one twist after another. We move from Mexico to Los Angeles, where the finale is set. Bodies start dropping one after another, all the bad guys go off one after another. McGee starts getting the hang of the plot more than us, of course, but we are still drawn to the end of the story through one sub-text after another. McGee is not the atypical detective, so his methods are unconventional but brutal in the end. Some perniciously vile characters are presented to us along the way.

John MacDonald is an American writer and the Travis McGee series spawned the 60s to mid 80s and were fairly successful.  This book was published in 1965.
My rating 3/5 

BEST bus no. 262

The BEST should add more services during the morning & evening peak hours on the no. 262 Goregaon Station - Ayyappa Mandir route. I say this because many passengers take the share auto from the end of M.G. Road during this period and even the share autos are not available most of the times, so a big queue is formed there also. So this is a good opportunity for BEST to capture that market of short distance passengers to Goregaon station. I would suggest to keep one bus every 15 minutes starting from 7.30 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. in the morning and from 4.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. In the evening also there is a huge shortage of auto rickshaws from the Goregoan station to Link Road, so this service could be very beneficial for the people plus it will also get some good business for BEST. They will get passengers from Bangur Nagar, Motilal Nagar, and all along M.G. Road. BEST needs to be innovative to get more business in view of the fact that their power division is not subsidising their transport division anymore and their huge losses. Rickshaws will lose business but who the hell cares for them considering their blatant refusals to ply passengers except to their favoured destinations. 

violation at traffic signal

Today when i was coming to office by BEST bus, the bus stopped at a  traffic signal well before the parallel lines before the zebra crossing. There was one motorbike also similarly standing before the bus but well within the zebra crossing line. Whereupon comes one other motor biker from behind and he was constantly honking to the other motor biker to go ahead. But the guy in front totally refused to go ahead. Again the biker came and shouted at the front biker to move ahead. Whereupon the first biker told him of the zebra crossing rule and pointed to the CCTV installed up there on the opposite side. Some altercation took place between the two, the second biker moved ahead regardless. We were watching all these from the BEST bus. There's compliance for you, technology in the form of CCTV forces compliance on some, but some do not bother. I am sure the second biker comes into the category of people who will not pay the traffic challan at all when it is automatically issued on the basis of his violation of the specific rule. 

Mutual Fund Schemes - Rationalisation & Categorisation

SEBI circular dated 6th October, 2017

http://www.sebi.gov.in/legal/circulars/oct-2017/categorization-and-rationalization-of-mutual-fund-schemes_36199.html

Subject: Categorization and Rationalization of Mutual Fund Schemes

1. It is desirable that different schemes launched by a Mutual Fund are clearly distinct in terms of asset allocation, investment strategy etc. Further, there is a need to bring in uniformity in the characteristics of similar type of schemes launched by different Mutual Funds. This would ensure that an investor of Mutual Funds is able to evaluate the different options available, before taking an informed decision to invest in a scheme.

2. In order to bring the desired uniformity in the practice, across Mutual Funds and to standardize the scheme categories and characteristics of each category, the issue was discussed in Mutual Fund Advisory Committee (MFAC). Accordingly, it has been decided to categorize the MF schemes as given below:

I. Categories of Schemes, Scheme Characteristics and Type of Scheme (Uniform Description of Schemes):

3. The Schemes would be broadly classified in the following groups:
a. Equity Schemes
b. Debt Schemes
c. Hybrid Schemes
d. Solution Oriented Schemes
e. Other Schemes

The details of the scheme categories under each of the aforesaid groups along with their characteristics and uniform description are given in the Annexure.

4. As per the annexure, the existing ‘type of scheme’ (presently mentioned below the scheme name in the offer documents/ advertisements/ marketing material/etc) would be replaced with the type of scheme (given in the third column of the tables in the Annexure) as applicable to each category of scheme. This will enhance the existing disclosure. Hence, for the purpose of alignment of the existing schemes with the provisions of this circular, change in “type of scheme” alone, would not be considered as a change in fundamental attribute.

5. In case of Solution oriented schemes, there will be specified period of lock in as stated in the Annexure. However, the said lock- in period would not be applicable to any existing investment by an investor, registered SIPs and incoming STPs in the existing solution oriented schemes as on the date on which such scheme is getting realigned with the provisions of this circular.

6. The investment objective, investment strategy and benchmark of each scheme shall be suitably modified (wherever applicable) to bring it in line with the categories of schemes listed above.

II. Definition of Large Cap, Mid Cap and Small Cap:

7. In order to ensure uniformity in respect of the investment universe for equity schemes, it has been decided to define large cap, mid cap and small cap as follows:

a. Large Cap: 1 st -100 th company in terms of full market capitalization
b. Mid Cap: 101 st -250th company in terms of full market capitalization
c. Small Cap: 251st company onwards in terms of full market capitalization

8. Mutual Funds would be required to adopt the list of stocks prepared by AMFI in this regard and AMFI would adhere to the following points while preparing the list:

a. If a stock is listed on more than one recognized stock exchange, an average of full market capitalization of the stock on all such stock exchanges, will be computed;

b. In case a stock is listed on only one of the recognized stock exchanges, the full market capitalization of that stock on such an exchange will be considered.

c. This list would be uploaded on the AMFI website and the same would be updated every six months based on the data as on the end of June and December of each year. The data shall be available on the AMFI website within 5 calendar days from the end of the 6 months period.

9. Subsequent to any updation in the list, Mutual Funds would have to rebalance their portfolios (if required) in line with updated list, within a period of one month.

III. Process to be followed for categorization and rationalization of schemes:

a. Only one scheme per category would be permitted, except:
i. Index Funds/ ETFs replicating/ tracking different indices;
ii. Fund of Funds having different underlying schemes; and
iii. Sectoral/ thematic funds investing in different sectors/ themes

b. Mutual Funds would be required to analyze each of their existing schemes in light of the list of categories stated herein and submit their proposals to SEBI after obtaining due approvals from their Trustees as early as possible but not later than 2 months from the date of this circular.

c. The aforesaid proposals of the Mutual Funds would also include the proposed course of action (viz., winding up, merger, fundamental attribute change etc.) in respect of the existing similar schemes as well as those that are not in alignment to the categories stated herein.

d. Subsequent to the observations issued by SEBI on the proposals, Mutual Funds would have to carry out the necessary changes in all respects within a maximum period of 3 months from the date of such observation.

e. Where there is a merger of schemes/change of fundamental attribute(s) of a scheme (as laid down under SEBI Circular No. IIMARP/MF/CIR/01/294/98 dated February 4, 1998), the AMCs would be required to comply with Regulation 18 (15A) of SEBI (Mutual Funds Regulation, 1996).

f. Mutual Funds are advised to strictly adhere to the scheme characteristics stated herein as well as to the spirit of this circular. Mutual Funds must ensure that the schemes so devised should not result in duplication/minor modifications of other schemes offered by them. The decision of SEBI in this regard shall be binding on all the mutual funds.

IV. Applicability of this circular:

a. All existing open ended schemes of all Mutual Funds
b. All such open ended schemes where SEBI has issued final observations but have not yet been launched.
c. All open ended schemes in respect of which draft scheme documents have been filed with SEBI as on date
d. All open ended schemes for which a mutual fund would file draft scheme document.

This circular is issued in exercise of the powers conferred under Section 11 (1) of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992, read with the provision of Regulation 77 of SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations, 1996 to protect the interests of investors in securities and to promote the development of, and to regulate the securities market.