Why SEBI’s Madhabi Puri Buch won’t take the tough calls

A series of interim orders, with no visibility on final closure of cases, indicates that India’s market regulator has remained largely toothless.

Ashish Chauhan and Amitabh Chaudhry —heads of NSE and Axis Bank—have a common thread. They are both awaiting orders from the Securities and Exchange Board of India. 

Chauhan is waiting for the market regulator’s approval of NSE’s initial public offering (IPO) and Chaudhry for the final order on Axis Mutual Fund’s front-running scam (that broke in May 2022). In both cases, the wait is over a year long. 

This interminable wait for SEBI orders stands in sharp contrast to the hope that greeted Madhabi Puri Buch when she took charge of the regulator in March 2022. As the first non-bureaucrat …

Author

Furquan Moharkan

Furquan leads the banking coverage at The Morning Context. A business journalist with eight years of experience and a best-selling author, in his earlier stints as a reporter with the Deccan Herald and a columnist at The Banker, he wrote on banking, financial markets and regulatory affairs. He has extensively covered India's debt market crisis, banking crisis and the fall of Yes Bank.

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furquan@mailtmc.com

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