The fund has sought delicensing of the registrar, said the asset management company's chief executive officer, RG Sharma, at the launch of its Dhanvarsha 13 scheme, an income and growth scheme.

Sharma said investors had suffered delays in receiving redemption monies due to the registrar. "It is for this reason that the fund has initiated action against the registrar," he added. The complaint was lodged with SEBI last month.

In a related development, the redemption amount on Dhanvarsha 5 is pegged at Rs 261 crore. The scheme came up for redemption on July 31. LIC Mutual Fund expects about Rs 40 crore from this amount to be switched to the Dhanvarsha 13 scheme, which hit the market on August 1.

The Dhanvarsha 13 scheme is a closed-end scheme which offers a monthly return of 12.50 per cent and anannual return of 13.25 per cent for the first year. LIC Mutual Fund expects to mobilise Rs 170-180 crore through the scheme, same as the amount picked up in Dhanvarsha 12 scheme, which had offered marginally higher returns.

According to Sharma, LIC Mutual Fund has put three schemes on the drawing board. One is expected to be an open ended scheme, another a money market mutual fund and the third, an insurance linked scheme.

These would be launched during the course of the year, said Sharma. As regards Dhanvarsha 13, income would be assured for five years, but income for subsequent years would be announced at the beginning of every year, depending on the interest rate scenario. The AMC is also guaranteeing that units will be redeemed at a minimum of face value at the end of the scheme's tenure.

The scheme has already mopped up Rs 10 crore in the first two days of its opening. The issue closes on September 14 and the earliest closing date is August 31.

Sharma said that the mutual fund currently has acorpus of Rs 1,600 crore through all its schemes. It has dematerialised about 80 per cent of its holdings in those scrips where SEBI has mandated mutual funds to trade only in demat shares.

Giving details of the Rs 170 crore mop-up by Dhanvarsha 12, which closed on May 15 this year, Sharma said that Rs 32 crore was switched over from unitholders of Dhanvarsha 4.

About 39 per cent of the investors were retail, with investments upto Rs 5,000 while 25 per cent were high net worth investors, with investments of above Rs 1 crore each.

LIC targets Rs 1,500-crore investment

The insurance monolith, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has already pumped in about Rs 400 crore in the secondary equity markets in the current financial year.

It expects to invest about Rs 1,500 crore this financial year as against Rs 1,100 crore in 1997-98, said G Krishnamurthy, chairman of LIC. Speaking to reporters after the formal launch of Dhanvarsha 13 scheme by LIC Mutual Fund, Krishnamurthy said that LIC wouldremain as aggressive in the equity markets as it has in the recent past. "Our annual accretion is about Rs 20,000 crore and we intend to invest the entire amount that we are permitted to, as per the norms", said Krishnamurthy.

LIC is believed to have been buying aggressively in the recent past. Krishnamurthy said that the mutual fund arm would need to come out with more and more innovative products and move away from assured return schemes once equity markets improve.