L&T's ex-employee moves NCLT alleging mismanagement of welfare fund

A shareholder and former employee of Larsen and Toubro (L&T) have approached the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) alleging oppression and mismanagement of employee welfare fund and assets of the company.

The petitioner Uday Dixit sought action against the engineering major and its chief A M Naik.

Dixit, in his petition, alleged that the company had committed fraud on shareholders and its employees.

The petition filed before the NCLT's Mumbai bench claims that L&T had deducted a sum from the salaries of its employees, including the petitioner's, between 2003 and 2008, without taking due consent.

Even though a Memorandum of Settlement regarding wage scale and other payables to workers was signed and given to the workers by the company's union, the deduction of Rs 2,000 per month from the payables to the employees was never reflected in the settlement, the petition claimed.

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, 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 Nirali, Naik's grand-daughter who died of the dreaded disease as a child.

Dixit and a few other shareholders had said the land allotted for the proposed hospital was supposed to be a manufacturing facility of the company till 2019.