Colo case: SAT gives 4 weeks to NSE officials to file replies

MUMBAI: The Securities Appellate Tribunal Wednesday asked eight NSE officials, including past-ceo Chitra Ramakrishna, to file rejoinders within four weeks in their pleas against Sebi penalising them in the co-location case.

The tribunal also fixed November 27 as the date for disposing off the case and said no further extension will be granted to anyone beyond these four weeks. It can be noted that NSE had already filed its rejoinder to the case after moving the tribunal on May 20. After an extensive probe, the Sebi in five separate orders running into 400 pages, had on April 30, NSE to disgorge Rs 1,000 crore, including 12 percent interest for its alleged culpability in the case.

The order has scuttled the IPO plans of the bourse as it has been banned from accessing the markets for six months or launching any new derivative products. Sebi also asked Ramakrishna, EX-CEO Ravi Narain and two others to pay back 25 percent of their salaries from June 2010 to March 2014. The scam came to light in 2015.

Following this, the nation's largest bourse and the people penalised for the case had challenged the order at the SAT on May 20 seeking interim relief and full relief saying that the Sebi orders not made a case that any trading member got any advantage because of preferential access. The co-location case dates back to 2015, when a whistleblower wrote to Sebi alleging NSE was giving a few brokers preferential access to its servers.