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Sebi to get 2 more board slots

Rakesh P Sharma & Janaki Krishnan

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is to get two additional full-time board positions when the Sebi Act is amended in the current Parliament session.

At present, only two full-time board seats are available, both of which are vacant.

Two executive directors from the top management are expected to be inducted into the board, while the other two slots will be reserved, one for an industry figure and the other for an independent individual.

Thus far, A V Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla occupied one of the full-time member slots, while the other was occupied by J R Varma, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

But both of them resigned last year. Birla, who headed the committee on corporate governance, did not attend most of the Sebi board meetings, while J R Varma quit citing personal reasons.

Sources said the government was scouting around to fill up the two posts and a few persons had been sounded out, though no confirmations had been obtained.

Under the Sebi Act, the board comprises a chairman, two central government members, a Reserve Bank of India nominee and two full-time members appointed by the central government.

Currently, the two central government representatives are from the Department of Company Affairs and the finance ministry.

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had announced in the budget that the Sebi Act would be amended to strengthen it and to expand the board.

The need to have more members on the board gained currency after last year's market crisis.

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