The Corporate Governance Committee of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce organized a Webinar on "Insights into Virtual Shareholders' Meetings", on July 11th 2020, 4 p.m. onwards.

The objective of this online session was essentially to shed light on the aspects of e-Voting, Procedure of organizing Virtual AGM. Mr. Rajan Singhi, Chairperson, Corporate Governance Committee of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry initiated the Webinar by delivering a theme address followed by speakers introduction. The Webinar was graced by Mr. Pramod Kumar Rai Associate General Counsel, Nestlé India Limited, Mr. Tunal Kumar Ghosal, Assistant Company Secretary ITC Limited, Mr. Supratim Mitra, Assistant Vice President, National Securities Depository Limited as the speakers of the session.

Mr. Pramod Kumar Rai, Associate General Counsel, Nestlé, pointed out that conducting AGM, complying to MCA, SEBI circulars and Secretarial Standards there are certain key points that are to be kept in mind in order to uphold a certain satisfactory level of decorum in conduct of the business. He essentially highlighted on Presence of a Regulatory Support, Prompt Communication amongst members across emails and other digital communication platforms of sorts, Suitable environment for setting up a two-way communication facility and Setting up an Effective foreground for conduct of AGM. He also focused by saying that other than having a fully functional technical team set-up and conducting multiple dry runs, pre-AGM, the company should also focus on safeguarding the participants' data. That objective can be leveraged by introducing separate login facilities for auditors and management teams. The third highlight of his presentation was the company's focus on managing the event, in terms of delegating speakers and scripting events to optimise utilization of time at hand. He also spoke of the significance of recording the minutes of the meeting as also filling all resolutions with MCA.

Mr. Tunal Kumar Ghosal, Assistant Company Secretary, ITC spoke about the necessity of virtual gatherings in light of the recent Covid 19 contingencies that have surfaced to be fatal for large gatherings, and has prohibited gatherings strictly, as per the healthcare guidelines issued globally. He followed us through some of the goals that companies aim to achieve through the VMs that include emergency appointment of members and consolidation of a general consensus about a business through polling. He suggested that through email votes, the anonymity of a voter can be maintained, in turn sheltering the voters' privacy concerns.

Mr. Supratim Mitra, Assistant Vice President, NSDL demonstrated through an insightful hierarchical pyramid the constituting ingredients for a successful AGM. He pitched the use of SMS Voting alert; an OTP based login; implementation of a secured and user-friendly platform for conducting the meeting in tandem with the guidelines laid down by Companies Act 2013. He also proposed a blueprint for the sequence in which an ideal meeting must be conducted, starting with a moderator registering counts for quorum and sharing a briefing of the series of events that are to follow, allowing the stakeholders to have complete information about the overall AGM proceedings.

Mr. Sandeep Lakhotia, Co-Chairperson, Corporate Governance Committee, The Bengal Chamber & Company Secretary, Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited summed up the session by highlighting on the points discussed and thanked each speaker and participants for attending the session.