The Hindu : Recast SEBI: Chidambaram

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 22, 2002

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National

Recast SEBI: Chidambaram

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE Dec. 21. The Securities and Exchange Board of India should be recast as the UTI scam has proved its "ineptness," the Congress Jananayaga Peravai leader and former Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said here today adding that only persons with sound knowledge of the stock market should be on the board.

That SEBI's leadership was inept and that it had learnt nothing in spite of the nation witnessing "scam after scam" had been pointed out in the JPC report, Mr. Chidambaram told presspersons.

Over the last five years, SEBI's functioning had been poor, as it did not have "competent" people to monitor the stock market. The solution lay in recasting SEBI by having on the board people with experience in various segments of the stock market. "So far, the SEBI has been a parking lot for retired bureaucrats," Mr. Chidambaram said.

However, the then Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, should also own moral responsibility for the "poor monitoring" that led to the scam, he said. When the Finance Ministry could be blamed, how could the Minister be let off the hook? "If no accountability is fixed on him, then, in future, no one will own responsibility for lapses."

On the apprehension that the BJP would try the Gujarat experiment elsewhere, he alleged that "the BJP has the temptation of having a Narendra Modi in every State where it faces the prospects of elections." As for linking rivers to avert disputes, he said it would be better to go in for a regional link.

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