Uday Dixit, a former employee of Larsen and Toubro (L&T) filed a petition before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against chief A M Naik, alleging the company committed fraud on shareholders and its employees. The petitioner Dixit sought action against the company and its major, Naik, accusing oppression and mismanagement of employee welfare fund and assets of the company.
Dixit claimed that despite a Memorandum of Settlement regarding wage scale and other payables to workers was signed and given to the workers by the company’s union, L&T had deducted a sum of Rs 2,000 per month from the salaries of its employees, including the petitioner’s, between 2003 and 2008, without taking due consent. He added that the deduction from the payables to the employees was never reflected in the settlement.
According to Dixit’s petition, employees were verbally informed in a general meeting of the union that some amount would be deducted from their salaries and equity shares of L&T for the deducted amount would be issued to them. However, employees were given shares of the Employee Welfare Pvt Ltd company.
A response from L&T to an e-mailed query on the matter is awaited.
It can be noted that Dixit and a few other shareholders, in the 73rd AGM of L&T last month, had questioned the rationale for the board to allow Naik to set a super specialty cancer hospital at the Powai campus in memory of Naik’s grand-daughter who died of the dreaded disease as a child. The questions were raised over the land allotted for the proposed hospital which was supposed to be a manufacturing facility of the company till 2019.
