The Supreme Court on Monday asked senior counsel Meenakshi Arora to place on record the two articles in BusinessLine that highlighted the irregularities in the e-voting process conducted by Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund (FTMF).

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The apex granted Arora a hearing on the matter at 2 pm on Monday wherein she requested the court to take notice of the revelations made by the newspaper with regard to the SEBI-appointed ‘observers report’ and a forensic audit report into the entire e-voting process. After Arora placed the two newspaper stories on record, FTMF will have to file its reply by the end of the week. The court will again hear the matter during the next week.

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In its report on January 20, BusinessLine had revealed severe discrepancies pointed out by observer TS Krishnamurthy with regard to the e-voting of FTMF. The story revealed how votes were allowed to be cast disproportionately by unit holders and were based on one PAN one vote irrespective of investments. Another story on January 24 revealed that the Central Forensics and Science Laboratory had said that multiple votes were cast by investors from the same IP address that belonged to a company known as KFintech, which was appointed by FTMF to provide the e-voting platform. K-Fintech has not shared the entire log data with the auditor.

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