Abstract:
The first statutory regulatory body that the government of India
set up post the reforms of 1991 was the Securities and Exchanges
Board of India (SEBI). As a regulator for the securities markets,
SEBI was given the powers to create subordinate legislation and to
investigate wrong-doing and impose relevant penalties. In this paper,
we examine and describe the legal processes at SEBI with a focus on
the enforcement process, particularly on the quasi-judicial functions.
We make an attempt to lay out the principles that ought to drive such
functions in a regulatory body, against which we compare the current
workings at SEBI.We propose a series of improvements through which
the rule of law could be further strengthened.
