Manish, a shareholder of a company has not claimed his dividends from the company for the last 10 years due to different reasons. He wants to know whether he will be able to recover the dividends declared by the company

According to Section 124 of the Companies Act, 2013 dividends must be paid within 30 days from the date of declaration and if any amount remains unpaid or unclaimed then the company is required to transfer the unpaid dividend to a special account, known as Unpaid Dividend Account opened by the company in any scheduled bank within seven days from the date of expiry of thirty days. If any money transferred to this account remains unpaid or unclaimed for a period of seven years from the date of transfer to such account it shall be transferred by the company to the Investor Education and Protection Fund established under Section 125 (1) of the Companies Act, 2013 maintained and administered by the Central Government. In the present case, the amount of dividend for the first 3 years must have been transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund. The amount for remaining period must be in the Unpaid Dividend Account of the Company. According, to Section 125 of the Companies Act, 2013 read with Rule 7 of the IEPF(Accounting, Audit, Transfer and Refund) Rules, 2016, the person whose amounts has been transferred to Investor Education and Protection Fund, shall be entitled to get refund out of the fund in respect of such claims by submitting an online application in Form IEPF-5. Manish should approach the company for amount of dividend for last 7 years.