Right to vote

Article-69 The Companies Act, 1956 gives enormous rights to its members. The most important one among them is the voting rights in General meetings. That is, members have the power to decide certain matters regarding the working of a company. The Act has taken precautions to not to give full control to the Board. There are many Sections in the Act to protect the interest of members. But unfortunately and in practical, they have no power only rights. The Board decides and the general Body approves. Their rights end there. It is true that “crowd has no brain only heads”. In fact, the members are ignorant of their rights. Their rights are limited to vote in General Meeting. In real sense, their rights are to approve what the Board had decided.

Central Government has taken many initiatives to educate the investors. Many organizations are authorized/selected to conduct investor education programmes across the country. It is very interesting that many such programmes are taken place in star hotels. Star hotels are beyond the dreams of an average Indian. The fund using for investor education programmes are actually the dividend amounts, which are, unclaimed by the investors.

SEBI, RBI etc are doing their duties well in this regard. They insisting the Companies to stick on the rules and regulations and imposing heavy punishments on non-compliances. What about the Companies, which are beyond the scope of regulators?

The education should begin from school level. There no use in conducting education programmes by some agencies to certain classes of people. It is too late to include these matters in the syllabus of our school level. Such an initiative only can develop an educated generation having aware about the corporate sector.

The rights of members of a Company are very much like the rights of a citizen in our country. They have the right to vote to select a person to rule him next five years.