Sahara on ad blitzkrieg as date for SEBI summons nears

Ten days before Sahara chief Subrata Roy is due to appear before SEBI in the Rs 24,000-crore OFCD case, the group has resorted to yet another advertising campaign. This time the focus is on Sahara's retail expansion as well as the group's social activities, reports CNBC-TV18's Ashmit Kumar.

Subrata Roy, a veteran of regulatory battles, seems to have found his weapon of choice - an ad blitzkrieg. Monday's dailies featured lavish ads on Sahara's latest CSR initiative - VEDAS or Village Esteem Development Adoption - aimed at adopting 1,000 villages. However, carefully woven in with the CSR agenda, was a not-so-inconspicuous action plan on the Sahara's retail play - Sahara Q shops. Sahara claims that on Monday it opened 250 retail outlets in an attempt to establish a world record for opening the highest number of outlets in a single day. According to the advertisement, Sahara now boasts of 469 such outlets, over and above 30,000 ‘kirana’ stores enabled by 150 distributors. Sahara plans to ramp up the number of retail outlets to around 10,000 and ‘kirana’ stores to more than 5 lakh by April 2014. But the advertisement does not say that the expansion of Sahara Q shops rests on investors’ funds in two Sahara companies that have been allegedly swapped for a Q shop subscription i.e. the Rs 24,000 crore that SEBI has ordered Sahara to return to its OFCD investors. Analysts add that Sahara's CSR initiative is also not transparent. Incidentally, the seven states where Sahara plans to adopt 1,000 villages happen to be the very states where Sahara owns massive land-banks acquired from the very villages that are likely to be adopted. The timing of the advertisement is also critical. It was published just days after SEBI issued personal summons to Subrata Roy and three other directors directors to appear before the regulator on April 10 and has also directed them to furninsh all details regarding assets, investments and bank accounts along with complete books of accounts on or before April 8.  The summons comes even as the Securities Appellate Tribunal is hearing petitions filed by Subrata Roy and three directors against the attachment of personal assets and bank accounts.