Overview

Correspondence with Debenture-holders is the seventh chapter of the Maharashtra State Board (MSBSHSE) HSC Secretarial Practice syllabus for Std XII, coming right after the chapter on Correspondence with Members and just before the chapter on Correspondence with Depositors. Having already studied, in the Issue of Debentures chapter, what a debenture is, the types a company may issue, the statutory safeguards Section 71 of the Companies Act, 2013 builds around them, and the several methods by which debentures are eventually redeemed, this chapter turns to the practical, everyday side of that relationship: the actual letters a Company Secretary drafts to the people who have lent the company money against those debentures.

A debenture-holder's relationship with a company runs through several distinct stages, from the day the application money is received to the day the debenture is finally discharged — and at nearly every one of those stages, it is a letter from the Secretary's office that carries the company's side of the exchange: allotting the debentures applied for, regretting an application that could not be allotted and returning the money paid, informing the holder that interest has been credited or enclosing an interest warrant, notifying the holder that the debentures are due for redemption, or informing a convertible-debenture holder that conversion into equity shares has taken place. This is exactly the same drafting discipline the earlier chapters on Correspondence with Directors and Correspondence with Banks already built — a letterhead, a precise subject, a clear and complete instruction or piece of information, every relevant number stated exactly, and a signature carrying the Board's authority — applied here to the company's own creditors rather than to its directors or bankers.

This chapter has no equivalent in any CBSE/NCERT subject anywhere in India — company-secretary correspondence with debenture-holders is taught nowhere outside a dedicated Secretarial Practice paper like this Maharashtra HSC Secretarial Practice syllabus — but the underlying Companies Act, 2013 provisions on debentures, and the general banking and income-tax practice this chapter touches on, apply to any company issuing debentures anywhere in India, not just one registered in Maharashtra.

Throughout this chapter, keep one idea from the earlier chapter at the centre: a debenture-holder is a creditor of the company, never its owner. Every letter this chapter teaches you to draft — allotting debentures, regretting a non-allotment, paying interest, redeeming, or converting into shares — is written to somebody the company owes money to, not somebody the company answers to at a general meeting, and that single fact shapes both the tone and the content of every specimen in this chapter.