Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has admitted to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs that she made “inadvertent and unintentional mistakes” by holding three Director Identification Numbers (DINs).
While the Ministry decided to condone the illegality of Priyanka by imposing fine, it found that outgoing Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti prima facie violated provisions of Companies Act for holding six DINs.
The Ministry was acting on the petition filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy against Priyanka and Karti for illegally holding multiple DINs. As per Companies Act, holding more than one DIN is a punishable offence with imprisonment of six months and a fine of Rs 50,000. DIN is a unique number issued by Registrar of Companies (RoC) for those who become directors in companies.
“As regards multiple DIN applications filed by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, while the matter was under examination, Mrs Vadra through a letter admitted having made multiple DIN applications. Mrs Vadra has also stated that this happened due to inadvertent mistakes which were unintentional. Since default under Sec 266C is compoundable under Sec 621A of the Companies Act 1956, Mrs Vadra has submitted applications for compounding of the said defaults under Sect 621A of the Companies Act, 1956 to the RoC concerned,” said Naveed Masood, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs to Swamy in a letter dated May 16.
But in what could spell serious trouble for Chidambaram’s son, the Secretary went onto add that in case of multiple DIN applications submitted by Karti, it is observed that the case prima facie attracted provisions of Section 266A of the Companies Act. “Regional Director (NR) of this Ministry has been asked to call for explanations from Karti Chidambaram as per established procedure in such cases,” he said. The Regional Director has asked Karti to reply within 15 days.
Reacting to development, Swamy said in statement that, “the commission of offence under Company law regarding multiple DIN has been committed by a very large number of people in the Congress. I have compiled a list of these persons and will be filing criminal case against all of them. My next complaint will be against Robert Vadra’s violations in Company law by not filing mandatory statements like balance sheets for the past three years.”
