Chennai: Reforms in the process for reclaiming underlying shares and unclaimed dividends have led to a significant clearance of pending claims under the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF). Underlying shares and unclaimed dividends worth about ₹1 lakh crore were pending with the IEPF under the Union ministry of corporate affairs as of March 2025.Speaking at MOP Vaishnav College for Women in Chennai on Wednesday on the topic ‘The Art of Doing Economic Reforms’, Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister’s economic advisory council, said a significant portion of the ₹1 lakh crore, including unclaimed dividends, has since been cleared.Noting that the fund was created to help people reclaim their money, Sanyal said the process had become cumbersome. “There were 25 steps spread across three different portals. If there was a mistake in the 24th step, you had to go back to step one,” he said.To address this, the govt unified the process through a single portal and reduced the number of steps from 25 to 14. “As a result, the number of approvals increased sharply. About 900 claims were approved every month until Aug 2025. After the new system was introduced at the end of Sept 2025, approvals rose to 3,600 in Oct, 7,500 in Nov and 11,400 in Dec,” he said. Monthly approvals increased to 14,523 in March 2026.Sanyal said similar reforms had been implemented for the voluntary liquidation of companies, reducing the average approval time from 499 days in 2020-21 to 60. Emphasising the importance of process reforms, he said they are an essential part of the govt’s policy toolkit and often require only small, targeted changes to deliver significant outcomes.
