Refund & Cancellation Policy

What the ₹500 actually is

The amount is ₹500 (five hundred rupees), paid once, per registration form.

It is a REFUNDABLE COMMITMENT DEPOSIT. It is not a fee. It is not a ticket price. It is not a donation. It is not income of the trust. It buys nothing and it entitles you to nothing except to have your form considered.

A registration form is not treated as complete until the deposit has been paid. An unpaid form is not in the queue.

Why the trust takes it

This is the trust’s own reason, in the trust’s own words, printed on its own paper form:

“This amount is not being taken as income. People often fill in forms at several places at once and then do not come, which makes management difficult.”

The deposit exists to make a registration mean something. Places, food, bedding and a paat have to be arranged for a real, countable number of people, forty-five days in advance. That is the whole of it.

What happens to your ₹500 — all five outcomes

There are exactly five. Every registration ends in one of them, and every one of them is recorded against your form.

How the refund actually reaches you

Refunds are made through Razorpay, back to the ORIGINAL payment source — the same card, the same UPI ID, or the same bank account you used to pay. We cannot send it anywhere else. This is a rule of the payment system, not a choice of the trust.

It typically takes 5 to 7 working days to appear in your account after the trust issues the refund. Your bank, not the trust, controls that last step.

No bank details are needed from you, and you must never send them to anyone — not to us, not to a volunteer, not to anybody who telephones you. We already know where the money came from, and that is the only place it can go back to.

The refund is always the full ₹500. The trust deducts nothing, and does not pass on any payment-gateway charge to you.

The 1 November 2026 cut-off

Cancel your form at any time BEFORE 1 November 2026 and the full ₹500 comes back to you.

Cancel ON or AFTER 1 November 2026 and the deposit is FORFEITED. It will not be refunded. This is not a penalty and it is not negotiable at the counter — the date is enforced by the system, not remembered by a volunteer.

If you are accepted and then do not come

If your form is accepted but you never arrive, your ₹500 is not simply kept in an account. It is transferred to the trust’s Sadharan Khata — the general fund — as a donation in your name, and a receipt is issued to you.

The deposit is not transferable

A deposit belongs to the one form and the one aradhak it was paid for. It cannot be transferred to another person, to another form, or to a future Upadhan. If a relative wishes to register, they fill their own form and pay their own deposit.

How to cancel — there is no cancel button

Cancellation is done by the trust, not by you, and that is on purpose: a self-service cancel button on a page that a household shares one phone for is a button somebody presses on the wrong person’s form.

To cancel, send a WhatsApp message to +91 88 798 798 61 with your name and your registration number (it looks like SP83-00417). A volunteer will cancel the form and start the refund, if a refund is due under the table above.

This number is WhatsApp only. It is not answered as a voice call.

You can find your registration number again at any time on the “find my form” page — you do not need an email or a password.

When the trust cancels or rejects a form

The trust may decline a form, or cancel an accepted one, at its discretion — for example where the information given is incorrect, where the Niyamavali cannot be observed, or where the number of aradhaks has to be limited. Where a form is rejected or cancelled by the trust, the ₹500 is refunded in full, before the Upadhan begins.

When refunds are issued

Rejected forms: refunded before the Upadhan begins.

Cancellations before 1 November 2026: refunded after the volunteer cancels the form, usually within a few days.

Aradhaks who attend: refunded after Attarvayana, once presence has been marked.

In every case the money then takes a further 5 to 7 working days to appear in your account.

If something goes wrong

If your deposit has not reached you within 7 working days of being told that it was refunded, WhatsApp +91 88 798 798 61 with your registration number. Every payment and every refund carries a Razorpay reference against your form, and it can be traced.