@Snake.Head and
@pannet1 : As mentioned in the post, the old contract notes were "lost for some reason". Lost a good deal more that just contract notes -- besides machines, external hard drives, usbs, a few years of work. Do not use the cloud much (privacy reasons), and gmail/yahoo is not the primary email address. Am also
aware of annual CNs.
The stock market history should be relatively easy to reconstruct. For the other two brokers used, most of the required docs were available from their back-offices. What was not available required an email and a few days. This includes DP reports from ILFS / ISSL where the Zerodha demat lies.
Even for Zerodha, there should have been no need to contact them. Earlier, all the required reports were available from the back-offices. My recollection is that they were available this time last year; for some reason CN downloads prior to FY 2017-18 have been removed. Between bo.zerodha and q.zerodha I could get some reports. Very peculiarly, the Financial Ledger for 14-15 and 16-17 was available, but 15-16 came up blank and that was perplexing.
What galls is that they are resorting to "we are working on it", "very soon" and "will be available in a week" everytime I call them.
So coming back to the focus, which is not how CNs are important and how to save them, but ideas on what can be done if they are lost and assuming they are not available from the broker.
[As a side note, earlier LTCG could be assumed if the previous year-end DP showed sufficient holdings to cover sells. With the new computation, historical purchase price records becomes relevant].