Gods can’t have demat accounts, rules HC

Faced with a somewhat bizarre case, the Bombay High Court ruled on Friday that gods cannot have demat accounts or trade on the stock market.

The case was filed by the Shree Ganpat Panchaytan Sansthan Trust, a private religious trust formed by the Patwardhan family, erstwhile rulers of the Sangli princely state that registered its holdings in the names of Lord Ganesh - the popular god of wealth and prosperity - and four lesser deities, Chintamaneshwar, Chintamaneshwari Devi, Suryanarayan and Laxminarayan.

In March 2008, the trust approached Karur Vaishya Bank's Borivli branch for opening savings and demat accounts in the deities' names. The savings accounts were opened, but the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) on 29 April 2008 refused to open the demat accounts.

NSDL said the applicants were ''artificial persons'' in whose names demat accounts cannot be opened. The trust challenged NSDL's decision in the high court.

''Trading in shares on the stock markets requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from deities would not be proper,'' said justices P B Majumdar and Rajendra Sawant while tossing out the petition that challenged NSDL's refusal to open demat accounts in the names of the five deities.

''Gods and goddesses are meant to be worshipped in temples, not dragged into commercial activities like share trading,'' the court added. ''Since individual skill and day-to-day monitoring is required for operating such accounts, they cannot be opened in the names of artificial entities like gods.''