Firms hold Rs 500 cr unclaimed dividends

Dividend payments of at least Rs 530 crore are lying unclaimed with the country’s top-50 blue-chip companies, including the likes of Reliance Industries, ITC and HUL and Tata Steel.

The dividend payments announced by companies for their investors are required to be paid within 30 days of their declaration and any unpaid or unclaimed amount needs to be transferred to an ‘unclaimed dividend account’ within the next seven days.

Any dividend amount lying unclaimed in this account for a period of seven years subsequently gets transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF).

RIL had total unclaimed/unpaid dividends worth Rs 129 crore as on March 31, 2012. Other companies include ITC (Rs 80.76 crore), HUL (Rs 53.07 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 45.81 crore) at the end of their respective financial years.